


And Your Ghost, Above It All

by dirao



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Broken Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Happy Ending Not Guaranteed - Just Like Real Life, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, House Elves, Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy Friendship, M/M, Murder Mystery, Pining Draco Malfoy, Polyjuice Potion, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Repaying Debt, Seer Luna Lovegood, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:55:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26311510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirao/pseuds/dirao
Summary: Traditions and order are important to Draco Malfoy. Every Samhain, for the past sixteen years, he has visited his father in Azkaban, reluctantly keeping a promise to his mother. For the past six years, Draco has walked by the cell of the most renowed prisoner of Azkaban, and watched in silence as the light goes out from his green eyes. Every year, the man says nothing, and Draco doesn't think about it for another year.But today, things are different. Today, Harry Potter, convicted murderer, grabs onto his cloak and doesn't let go."You owe me a life," Potter says.And Draco's world is turned upside down.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Past Hermione Granger & Harry Potter
Comments: 76
Kudos: 195





	1. A Blood Debt

Draco dresses in black for every Azkaban visit. He doesn’t do it to be particularly morose, or to match the few Dementors that have remained. He does it because Azkaban is full of slime and soot and death. Black seems to be the only color that withstands it.

The Dementors – those who did not die in the war, those who stayed despite their more restricted powers - hover over the cells, high over the cells, when it’s visitation. Visitation is one of those human rights that Kingsley Shacklebolt had decided to extend all prisoners, Death Eaters included. “If there is to be rehabilitation, if we are to erase the wounds of our past, we must become better than our predecessors. We must rise above,” he had said, in his now famous speech

Draco was in agreement with Kingsley’s speech in every part, except that which brought him to Azkaban, every year, on the same date, at the same time. Per the terms of her husband’s imprisonment, Narcissa Malfoy could not visit: Lucius had asked for one visitor, and that was Draco. And so his mother had made him promise. He’s always had a weak spot where his mother is concerned, even now. And so he promised.

Draco comes, every year, dressed in black.

For the past sixteen years, he has taken the same route he takes now, year seventeen of his father’s life sentence. He has walked down the same corridor, past the same cells, full of half-men, full of emptied-out-souls. Devoid of any sort of joy. Sometimes there are laughs, hollow laughs that have no end, laughs that bounce against the walls, harbingers of madness.

For the past six years, however, he’s walked by one particular cell with a sense of trepidation.

The quiet cell. No movement, no sound. Just a raven-haired man, sitting on a concrete bench, his head in his hands. Saying nothing. Doing nothing.

He is a man with no visitation, because he is a man with no friends.

Draco hasn’t been able to look away, not once in six years. Not once in the six years, has the man looked back.

Draco passes by one more time, year seven by his count, and makes his way towards his father’s cell.

The man remains still.

/ / / / / / /

The Auror guard brings a chair for Draco to sit and then disappears. This is a shit posting for Aurors, and he’s sure the rest of the Auror guards are behind the dark walls playing exploding snap. For a high security prison, it has very lax security.

It also helps that most of the prisoners are half-dead and need very little guarding.

Lucius sits across from Draco on his concrete bed.

Bars stand between him and his father, but the chasm is much wider.

He had promised his mother he would visit. He had not promised to speak.

Lucius, however, has so much to say. He will list all that he will do when he gets out, ignoring the fact that he will never get out. He will talk about the weather (always cold, as is to be expected). He will ask about his mother, even though he should know, he should remember that there’s nothing more to ask.

Draco feels the salt water sticking to his face, clouding his vision, filling his nostrils.

What he wants to do is to scream.

What he does is absolutely nothing.

He stays so still, just like the man with the dark hair in the quiet cell.

Lucius talks about his mother’s roses. 

There is the stench of death on his father. Draco has always been able to tell, when death is near, ever since… It’s not a talent, but a curse, he thinks. Like most things in his life, a sustained curse. He will not last long in this world, his father. The sallow skin. The bony face. The long blond hair turned white and falling into clumps in his hands. He will not last long.

He watches his father with blank eyes. He wonders if he’ll feel relief when the time comes.

When his thirty minutes are over, Draco stands from the chair and, without another look, walks away. He thinks that Lucius keeps on talking when he leaves, but he can’t be sure.

When he reaches the quiet cell, however, there is something different.

Hands reach out to Draco and grab onto his cloak, pulling him close. Too close. The raven-haired man is pressing his face against the bars of his cell.

It is hard not to see the child behind the man. He’s not wearing glasses, and that surprises Draco somewhat. The man tries to focus his dark green eyes on Draco, taking him in. The lightning scar on his forehead strains against the metal, deforming itself. The hands are skeletal.

“You… owe me… a life,” the man says, his voice gravel, hoarse from lack of use. Maybe he has only screamed before today. Maybe he has said nothing for seven years.

Draco can’t help the fear bubbling in him, he is speechless. “Potter,” he whispers, fear dripping from every pore.

“You owe me a life, Malfoy,” he repeats, this man who inhabits the body of the once-heroic Harry Potter. This shadow of a man with bloodied hands, holding on to Draco’s cloak with such force that he is ripping it. Draco backs away, pushing himself away from the hands, ridding himself of the cloak so that Potter is left holding only dark fabric.

Draco thinks he has never seen so much pain in a man’s eyes outside his own mirror.

Draco can’t walk away fast enough, his heart thumping in his chest. He breaks into a breathless run and doesn’t look back.

Before the outside gate closes, he can hear the boots of the Aurors marching towards the formerly quiet cell, and one final scream, so clear and pure it erases everything else. Because there is power in repetition.

“MALFOY, YOU OWE ME A LIFE.”

And then, the hollow void of disapparition, the scream still ringing in his ears.

/ / / / / / / / /

Draco reappears into civilized society with a soft pop at the Scottish seaside and charms away any remnants of apparition trace. He walks slowly through the icy beach, the wind burning his cheeks, biting at his fingertips. The sand is so dark it is almost black.

He knows he is rattled, he will admit that to himself, and to no one else.

Potter is, and has always been, a point of discord in his life. To see him broken, in that cell, seems a punishment worse than death.

To have survived… that monster… to end up beaten in Azkaban, is obscene.

Draco shakes his head against the wind, realizing that he feels much colder because he has left his cloak behind. He could say it has been snatched from him, but that’s a lie. That’s not what it was about.

Draco walks up the steps to the boardwalk, and then a bit further to his car.

Draco’s car is an old VW beetle, fixed up and magically altered. But drive it he does, like any other Muggle. He likes the feeling of blending in. He even enjoys the traffic.

It takes him a few hours to make it into the Manor and continue his holiday traditions.

/ / / / / / /

This is his ritual. Once a year he visits his father in Azkaban. And once a year he visits his mother.

The gardens of the Manor are overrun with weeds. The rose bushes have grown far too tall in the absence of care. He could wave his wand and spell them into beauty again. But he doesn’t.

He pushes the door open and walks into the dusty foyer. Cobwebs greet him and he waves them away with his hands. The furniture is covered by white and gray bedsheets, and the house smells of cedar and humidity. There is rot taking over some walls, the floor.

He takes the sheets off his mother’s favorite chair and then he takes the sheet of a smaller armchair that is his own. For all intents and purposes, everything in this house is his.

He wants none of it.

He uncovers a shallow pensieve and with the flick of his wand he transfers the contents of a small vial into it. Another careful wand movement and there she is, his mother, the once-great Narcissa Malfoy. She walks elegantly to his side and presses her hand on his shoulder, and though he cannot feel it, he remembers how it used to feel. This shadow life is infinitely worse. But it is better than nothing.

This is his ritual. He converses with ghosts.

“How was your father, dear?” she asks, and sits across from him in her chair.

She is so beautiful. Translucent and luminous.

He used to lie, before, when it mattered. He doesn’t this time, not anymore.

“He looks like shit,” he says, measured.

“Oh, Draco…”

“He does, mother. He is dying.”

Her lips are pursed. He had disappointed her before. He would again.

“Did something else happen? You look… sad,” she says. She always says this. It’s always true. It was true when this memory was living and breathing, over seven years ago. It is true now.

“I saw Harry Potter in his cell today. He grabbed at me,” Draco says. He inhales sharply. “He said I owe him a life. And I think I do.” He sighs. “Does he have a right to ask for payment, anymore?”

She smiles softly. He can’t recall what he had told her that last time, but it had made her smile. He always treasured that. But it soon passes.

“What do you think about the renovations?” she asks, her hand waving towards the staircase. “I think they’ve done a wonderful job.”

The staircase rests under a thick layer of dust. The stairs have started to give way to the termites.

“It’s beautiful,” he lies to what remains of his mother’s smile. He had meant it, that time. But time is unforgiving.

She nods. “We’ll have to pay that debt later, but I think we can’t afford to just let everything go. We have to make things better, for the future.”

He nods slowly. It’s almost time. He stands and covers his seat again with the dusty sheet. He walks over to his mother’s shape and kisses the air where the top of her head should be. “I have to go now.”

She looks up at him and nods softly. “Happy Samhain, Draco.”

“Goodbye, mother,” he whispers. He moves his wand and everything is neatly placed back in its vial. He throws the sheet over her chair and, without looking back, walks away.

/ / / / / / / / / /

He parks in the midst of the Halloween ruckus, about a block away from his flat, and swerves to avoid a little girl dressed as a witch, walking hand in hand with a smaller boy dressed in a rotund pumpkin costume.

His flat is a small three-story walk-up. There’s a small shop on the ground floor; a kind old Pakistani man, Hassan, runs it with his daughter Nadiya. He navigates the Halloween candy and the black cat decals on the window, and buys a bottle of sparkling water and ginger biscuits before walking up to his flat.

The neighbors are quiet, even if the neighborhood isn’t. There are no kids in the small building and there is hardly any Halloween sentiment.

No one around him, in this world he has built for himself, observes the high holidays much.

He sheds off his coat and plugs in the small space heater. He puts on the kettle and waits for it to whistle vehemently.

This is also a ritual. It may be Samhain, but it is also a Tuesday night, and so he has Earl Grey and ginger biscuits. If it was Wednesday, it would be Orange Pekoe and chocolate biscuits.

He normally reads, but tonight he does not. His hands still shake as he holds his mug.

He knows that what Potter said is true. He owes Potter his life.

But at the moment, that’s neither here nor there.

Because murderers have no claims to blood debts.

And Potter is the most famous of wizarding murderers.

/ / / / / / / / /

It had been the day after Samhain, eight years past.

His mother was still alive, so he still read The Daily Prophet. She was disappointed that he wouldn’t move back in, but he’d spent Samhain with her because it was a high holiday and he had woken up to the smell of a lovely breakfast and had eaten his fill and had taken the unopened paper into the sitting room, with his cup of tea.

The front page had screamed at him.

Harry Potter arrested for the murder of war heroine Hermione Granger.

It lacked Rita Skeeter’s flair for the dramatic but it was very straightforward and left nothing to the imagination.

There had been mention of a fit of jealous rage. There had been mention of a bloodied wand. There had been testimony from Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger’s fiancé.

The same Hermione Granger who had been shattering the Ministry’s glass ceiling.

For a full minute, Draco had thought he was having a heart attack. The year 2007 seemed like a great year for the apocalypse to arrive while he held a teacup and read the paper.

Because it was impossible.

Because that wasn’t Harry Potter.

But there it was, in moving pictures, in sepia and black. Harry Potter held by magical handcuffs, behind a cell door. Pictures of a blood-stained carpet. Pictures of the Molly and Ginny Weasley crying.

And an old picture of Hermione Granger, her wild hair partially covering the scar on her neck, the scar Bellatrix had given her. The scar that was also his responsibility.

He had slit her throat, it had said in the paper. Cold blood, it said.

It had been a proper scandal, like no scandal ever before.

Draco had devoured it, read everything he could find.

Once, he’d walked past the Weasley joke shop and thought he’d go in, and maybe he would overhear something.

He wasn’t obsessed. He was… perplexed. Confused beyond measure.

What had happened to make Harry Potter become what he’d fought against?

And if he could change so much, could Draco also change?

It was a question that didn’t take him long to answer.

His mother was dead before Christmas, that year. And then his world spun out of control.

/ / / / / / / / /

Draco walks to work, his hands in his pockets, hiding from the cold autumn air. He doesn’t use the car much, but it feels good to know he has the choice.

He likes choices. He likes being able to choose.

After the war, it was the one thing he believed would save him.

He had chosen not to return home. He had chosen to finish his school year in Durmstrang, away from the watchful eyes of Britain.

He had gone on to work with potions masters. He opened a small potion shop in Edinburg and wore long sleeves and kept his head down.

He hardly ever went to London, then.

He chose to live a quiet life.

Then his mother died.

He chooses to walk this cold London morning, briskly through the busy streets.

He knows that if he chose to buy a copy of The Daily Prophet now, he’d see a headline about the seven-year anniversary of Granger’s bloody death at the hands of The Man Who Killed. So he chooses not to.

He arrives at the shop a few minutes before he has to, because he enjoys the ritual of opening it and wishes to take his time. He sheds his coat and puts on a dark apron. He cleans the counter and brings the chairs down off the tables. He takes down the silly Halloween decorations and turns the sign on the door to open.

A small, slender woman in her twenties walks in a few minutes later and greets Draco with enthusiasm. Her hands are bony and her hair is very black, her nose a hook.

“You’re early again,” she says, her grin wide as she grabs another apron from behind the counter. She pulls her hair up into a ponytail. Her accent is strong, a clear sign that she learned English as an adult.

“You’re late, Paula,” he counters, pronouncing the name as she does, hard consonants and vibrant vowels of a Spanish-speaker.

She leans her elbows on the counter and watches him finish with the chairs. “I had a Halloween party,” she explains. “I was a sexy witch.”

Draco laughs, because it is what he’s supposed to do and because he can picture her dressed as a Hogwarts witch and thinks that it is much funnier. “Can you get started on Mister Anderson’s order?” he asks, wiping down the tables.

“Two cappuccinos, two americanos, one tea, to go, right?” she asks.

Draco nods.

/ / / / / / /

His foray into the Muggle world started with a death certificate.

His mother had had the audacity to die at home, and she had wanted to be buried there. Draco had thought it would be pretty straightforward. It was only a few feet away from her bed to the graveyard.

His eyes had been red and swollen when the doctor at St. Mungo’s had said that he could not issue a death certificate unless Draco took the body to the hospital.

He had thought it a ridiculous request and he had let the man know, with a very colorful string of expletives. The man had told him to go fuck himself with his wand.

Thus began his relationship with bureaucracy.

Regular muggle bureaucracy.

There were offices he had to go to, a Muggle doctor who had to visit the house, requiring Draco to take down all sorts of wards and glamour most of the paintings and tapestries. There were phone calls to be made, so there was a mobile to buy. There were permits for household burial plots and paperwork to be filled, so he had to get a biro and then quickly learn to use a computer.

It had taken his mind off things.

By the time Andromeda and her grandson were leaving the house after the burial, he had acquired a little muggle knowledge, an ID card and a very simple mobile. The Muggle life had started to trickle in and the challenge was enough to help him forget what had taken him there in the first place. So he bought a pair of jeans. Then a small mp3 player. Then a computer. Then he got a car and a flat and a coffeeshop.

And a one-way ticket out of being a former Death Eater and just being Draco, a guy with a nametag and a weird tattoo who serves coffee.

/ / / / / / / / /

The day goes by fast, faster than Draco would like. He’s been spacing out and forgetting to switch out regular milk for almond; he over-steeps a cup of Darjeeling, effectively ruining it.

Potter’s words ring in his ears.

It’s not just what he said, it’s why, and why now.

He had walked past that cell before. Six times. Every year Potter grew thinner, and hairier, and dirtier. But until yesterday, he had never looked up.

Draco had been sure that the Dementors had already kissed him, and that the Harry Potter he’d once rivaled with such relish didn’t exist anymore.

But yesterday, there had been fire in his eyes.

Yesterday, he’d seen the Potter who had once cursed him and bled him. The Potter who had saved his life from the Fyendfire. The Potter who had mailed him back his wand after the battle, wrapped in a piece of parchment with a message that said, “LIVE”. Nothing else, in almost illegible handwriting: forgiveness in a single word.

The Potter who had testified at his trial and said that Draco had just been a kid led astray and that he should be allowed to start over. The Potter who insisted that Lucius should take the brunt of all the punishment because he should have known better, he should have protected his son. The Potter who bitterly said that they had all been children, all been used for the greater good, and that it had to stop at some point, and maybe it was now, the point, and maybe it was he who had to put a stop to it. The Potter who was a man well before it was time, who had maybe never been a child.

The Potter who was not a murderer.

And so Draco pours the wrong milk and forgets the sugar.

“You’re being weird,” Paula says, and shoves him out from behind a counter and makes him sit at the far table and drink chamomile. “You’re always weird around Halloween,” she notes.

She can say ‘always’ because they’ve worked together for over three years and this is probably the closest thing to friendship that Draco has, this weird woman with weird hair who he writes a check out to every two weeks, this woman who has a girlfriend and a dog, both of whom Draco has met.

And yet, she doesn’t know why he’s weird on Halloween, because he can’t tell her.

About his father, about his mother, about the visits, about the decaying old house he can’t sell but can’t live in.

“Maybe I’ve caught a bug or something,” he lies.

She eyes him with suspicion, but sighs. “Do you want me to close tonight?”

He nods.

She places a kind hand on his shoulder. “Are you eating? Are you sleeping?” she asks, inquisitive.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I never lie.”

/ / / / / / / /

Draco takes advantage of his early leave from the coffeeshop and swings by the book shop to pick up his order. He’s had so little time in the Muggle world and there’s so much catching up to do. He likes science fiction best, but despises fantasy and its inaccurate depictions of magic. He gave romance a chance, but it rubs him the wrong way. He got into mysteries for a while, but he found the blood and gore problematic.

He’s going through the classics.

He also enjoys Dr. Seuss.

He thinks that there are things he and all wizards missed, this world of muggle literature, so rich in its imagination. He likes to think that he’d have this imagination for writing if he did not have magic. All these books, all these creations.

The book shop is one of his favorite places in London. It’s tiny and dusty and filled to the brim of used books and new. The shop is manned by Terry, a tall skinny guy that carries himself like Blaise did at Hogwarts, but with a much quicker smile. He wears a beanie over his dreadlocks sometimes, sometimes he’s got them pulled over the top of his head. They always bounce when he says hello.

“Hey, man, I got your order,” Terry says when he comes in. “Oh, and I just got the newest William Gibson in paperback…” Terry comes around the counter and hands Draco a glossy paperback. “The Peripheral”.

“You are going to bankrupt me,” Draco says, taking the book in his hand as if it’s a gold ingot or some equally precious gem. “I really shouldn’t.” He’s got so many other books.

“Oh, come on, you only live once.”

So very true.

Draco pays for his books and waves Terry goodbye. He ducks into a tiny ramen place and eats quickly, avoiding the temptation to open one of his books and stain it with soy sauce.

He is almost enjoying his day when he notices a paper resting beside one of the men in the shop, a small Japanese man with very wrinkled hands has his plate resting on The Daily Prophet.

He avoids looking at it but he recognizes the pictures even out of the corner of his eye. Side-by-side, like they’d been in school, a screaming Harry Potter and a brave Hermione Granger in little boxes, forever locked in their roles of murderer and victim.

Draco still doesn’t really believe it.

He walks out of the ramen place and walks straight home. His mind races and stops repeatedly, and he can feel a bout of obsession washing over him like a wave.

He’s always thought that it must be true and so he hasn’t dwelled on it, not really, not since his mother died. But it just seems so farfetched, like those stupid fantasy novels. Harry Potter can’t be a murderer, but he is, because if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be in prison.

But in the back of his mind, he knows that it isn’t a very sound argument. Because, yes, guilty men go to prison, like his father did. But innocent men rot in jail for years on end, like Sirius Black once had. And most importantly, he knows that guilty men can walk free and own coffeeshops and read science fiction novels and eat ramen. He knows, because he is a very guilty man who enjoys his freedom, enjoys the cold wind on his face and quiet walks through London’s busy streets.

And if he can walk free, that means that Harry Potter could be an innocent man, couldn’t he?

Potter has always been his reflection through a fun-house mirror, his rival, the person against which everything was measured.

Draco has to admit that sometimes he has missed having that, because one day it just stopped. Potter became unmentionable and Draco became almost a Muggle and now the world he inhabits doesn’t know Potter and doesn’t care, and the world he left behind abandoned Potter in a very small, very dirty cell.

Draco hasn’t taken his wand out of his pocket outside his flat or the manor in years.

Draco walks into the flat with relief. Sometimes he thinks he could get a cat or a dog or a canary, someone to miss him when he’s gone. But he never goes through with it.

What he does is take his shoes off at the door and put on slippers, plug in the heater, put on the kettle. He makes himself his tea and he gets out the biscuit tin. He settles into the chair with his new book.

He drifts off, sitting in his chair, his book in hand.

That night he dreams.

/ / / / / / / / /

He walks into the library at Hogwarts. He’s holding a battered copy of Neuromancer in his hands.

Behind the stacks, in the forbidden section, Hermione Granger rests her head in her hand while she reads.

Then there is blood on her books, on her clothes. It trickles down from an open gash in her throat, the one Bellatrix made, the one he allowed to happen.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t notice the blood.

It pools at her feet. It rises, rises, rises, reaching the tips of her shoes.

“Granger,” he attempts, but nothing comes.

He tries to approach but can’t move. Someone is holding on to his shoulder.

He turns.

It’s Potter.

Potter, with his messy beard and dark circles around his eyes. Potter without glasses.

Potter screaming soundlessly.

He turns to Hermione. The blood has reached her knees.

Potter leans into him, whispering in his ear, “You owe me a life”.

/ / / / / / / / / /

He wakes covered in sweat. The sun hasn’t come up yet.

He abandons the book and heads to the bathroom. He turns on the shower and walks into it, fully clothed.

Harry Fucking Potter.

Well, it’s evident to Draco that Harry Potter has taken residence in his head again, rent-free.

He hates this. He peels off his soaked shirt and just decides to go ahead and actually take a shower, while he’s here.

Minutes later he flops onto his bed and stares at the ceiling. There are two ways out of obsession, he remembers this from his unsuccessful stint in therapy a few years back. One is the healthy alternative, which is to find the root of the problem, and address it instead.

Therapy only works if you don’t have to lie, Draco muses. Lying about your magical background, for example, is not conducive to an honest patient-therapist relationship.

The second alternative, the unhealthy alternative, is to dive so far into the obsession that you find the door inside it and the key that unlocks it.

Draco enjoys tea and biscuits and books. He also enjoys firewhiskey and is not quite ashamed to admit he’s done a few drugs as well, recreationally, on very particular occasions. Healthy alternatives are not necessarily his bread and butter.

He knows what he has to do.

He slipped out of his cloak to escape Potter, and Potter had found him in a dream. Conventional methods of escapism won’t work.

The only way out, is in.


	2. Malfoy Investigations

It doesn’t take Draco too much pleading for Paula to man the coffeeshop for the day. When he asks, she just texts back: _I’ll take Orion. Make it pet-friendly for the day_.

He groans but sends her a smiley-face. He likes dogs, he just prefers them not hanging around while he’s carrying cups of hot coffee. But it will give him the morning.

He looks through the small Magical London Guidebook he keeps in his bedroom. Most of his Muggle books are in the bookshelves in the living room, but his magical books stay in the bedroom, away from prying eyes. Not that he has many visitors either way.

He finds what he needs and quickly writes the address down. He wonders if there’s a dress code, but supposes not. He hasn’t worn a robe since his mother’s funeral, and he really doesn’t intend to start now. If he sticks out like a sore thumb, then so be it.

The address is downtown and he prefers not to fight over parking, so he takes the tube. He has a metro card that he tops up maybe six times a year. He doesn’t have much need to go to the city center and he tries to avoid Diagon Alley as much as possible.

The Hermione Granger Public Library, renamed after her untimely death, is tucked away between a teashop and a Tesco, a small door invisible to the Muggle public. He pushes the old green door open and walks in.

He is met by a tiny woman on a front desk, who smiles up at him with sparkling blue eyes, sitting next to a large door to a cage lift. “Good morning,” she says. “What can I help you with?”

Draco pushes his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I need to look at old issues of The Daily Prophet.”

“Physical or microfiche?” she asks, eyeing him with suspicion.

“Uh…”

“Microfiche is faster if you don’t know the exact issue you’re looking for. The physical archives require some… security measures. Gloves and such,” the woman explains. Draco nods.

“Microfiche, I guess. Is it very hard to use?”

“We have some volunteers.” The woman stands and presses the lift button. “What year?”

“Uhm… 2007,” Draco says.

“Such a tragic year,” the woman muses. “That will be floor minus twenty-seven.” Draco enters the lift. As the doors close the woman says, “Do hold on.”

The lift plummets almost faster than Draco can grab the safety railing. He feels like a cat in a carrier basket. His stomach flops and his knuckles turn white. And suddenly the lift jerks to a full stop.

The door opens, accordion-like, and he is met by a house elf wearing a very old pink hoodie with Britney Spears emblazoned on the front. “Hello,” she says.

Draco tries to hide his shock. It has been quite some time since he’s seen a house elf. “Hello.”

“You is looking for microfiche of The Daily Prophet, you is.”

“Yes, I am. 2007,” he adds. “You’re the volunteer.”

“Piply is being free house elf. Piply is volunteering.”

“Good, I’m glad,” he says, though he’s not exactly sure why he is glad.

“Come with Piply,” she says, and guides him through a maze of corridors and onto the library’s big hall.

It’s a massive structure, floors upon floors of books, extending up and down from where he stands. The bookshelves are arranged against the walls and books fly up and down shelves, past his ears, brushing his coat. The center of each floor is hollow, allowing for looking up and down to the other floors. There are witches in the floors below, and other house elves. The house elves are sorting the books, wandless magic carrying the books from one floor to the next.

“I’ve never been here before,” Draco says, to no one in particular. It had seemed odd to him, at first, the amount of Muggle world that rested outside the realm of the magical. Now it seems to him that there is a strange magic in being able to hide his native world from Muggle eyes. That this library - this wondrous place – exists, it is proof that there is a world hiding under their noses.

That this place is named after her is fitting.

Piply touches a smaller white bookcase which contrasts with the dark wooden ones that surround it. It slides back and to the side, revealing a very plain white door. This has to be a recent addition.

“You is knowing how to use the microfiche?” Piply asks, extending an arm so Draco can enter the room.

He has to duck to cross the doorframe and the ceiling inside the room is low, his head barely clears it. “I do not.”

“Piply is showing you. Piply is teaching you how,” she says. “You is taking wand out.”

Piply walks up to a small machine and flips a switch and it is on.

Draco follows the cable with his eyes and finds it is plugged into the wall. “It’s electric,” he exclaims, surprised.

“It is magically altered, it is,” she points out.

Draco draws his wand as instructed and sits on a small stool on wheels that Piply pats with her small hand. Her large eyes look at the machine with expertise. “You is telling me the year and month, if you knows it.”

“October and November 2007,” Draco says.

Piply nods. “That was a very bad year, it was.” She takes a hold of Draco’s wand, and taps the machine with it. She then holds one hand over the wand and pronounces an incantation, her voice barely above a whisper. “You is learning how now. You is pointing the wand. You is moving the wand. The pages, they is flipping, you is reading.”

He is, indeed, knowing how. She moves his wand up and the page on the screen moves, sideways the same. She moves it in a circle to enlarge it, she points to the center of the screen and it reduces again. “That’s brilliant.”

“We is brilliant, House Elves,” she says, assuredly. “Wizards weren’t knowing how to make it work. We is making it work.”

Draco nods. “Thank you.”

“Two hours I is going. Two hours I is coming back.”

“That should be good,” Draco says. “If I have any questions or mess it up, is there…?”

Piply points at a small handwritten list of instructions stuck to the table. “I is writing everything down.”

Draco nods a small thanks and Piply walks out of the room, leaving him to deal with this mix of magic and outdated muggle technology he is quite afraid to break.

/ / / / / / / / / /

He sets to work methodically, exploring the coverage from Samhain that year and onwards.

November is filled with articles on the matter. The first coverage is, of course, the bloodiest.

The picture of the bloodstained carpet ripples under the opaque monitor.

The picture of Hermione Granger looking bravely onward, her wand in hand, pressed against her chest. A picture from the Ministry, he realizes, a portrait for some credential of sorts.

The picture of Harry behind bars, a mugshot, must have been illegally obtained. The byline is not Rita Skeeter’s, he notes again, but some other reporter.

The faces of a crying Molly and Ginny Weasley are heartbreaking. He knows what it’s like to lose someone, now. He understands the grief.

Curiously absent is a picture of Ron Weasley, though there are some paraphrased sentences attributed to him.

“Ron Weasley, co owner of Weasley’s Wizard Whizzes, briefly commented on the relationship with his fiancé, calling her the love of his life. There is some suspicion that this is a crime of passion, brought on by the impending nuptials of Weasley and Granger, two thirds of the famous Golden Trio, whose bravery in the Battle of Hogwarts was recognized by the Order of Merlin.”

“It is rumored that Harry Potter had a long-standing obsession with Ms. Granger fueled by years of close friendship and unrequited attentions, as had been reported in this newspaper as early as 1995. Was it the engagement that pushed him over the edge?”

Draco remembers Rita Skeeter’s “previous coverage” and how so much of it had been lies, some he’d even helped perpetuate. He shakes his head, a fruitless attempt to clear it.

He pushes forward, as the coverage dwindles, then picks back up for the trial.

Ron testifies at the trial, as does an expert on spell tracing on wands from the Auror department. Ollivander is mentioned as the main analyst, but he is not called to trial.

Harry Potter does not speak during the trial, not even to defend himself.

The coverage states that he does not utter a word.

He is sentenced and the coverage just stops.

It stops on December 17th.

Draco scrolls a few days ahead, to the 20th.

He finds it with ease, his mother’s obituary. “Narcissa Malfoy, nee Black, of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, lived a life of elegance that was marred by the actions of her husband and son during the Second Wizarding War. She and her son received Royal and Ministerial pardons. She is survived by her son, Draco, a potions-maker in Edinburg, her husband, Lucius, currently serving an Azkaban life sentence, and Andromeda Tonks, her sister.”

There is no mention of her roses, or how she kept the house, or how she’d protected Draco at risk to her own life. How she’d allowed herself to be dragged along by Lucius’ plans. How she had been strong, but not strong enough. Draco looks up to the ceiling and exhales, hard, holding back the tears that sting at the corners of his eyes. He shakes his head again.

He scrolls back to a few days after the crime, a small-ish note on November 4th, eulogizing Hermione.

It again mentions the engagement.

“School sweethearts, they’d been engaged since Valentine’s day this year,” it read.

At the time it never struck him as curious that the news of the engagement hadn’t reached him. He’d kept to himself, he’d stayed out of touch, no one would call him up and ask, _hey, guess who got engaged_? He didn’t have friends who gave out news like that.

Back then he’d had no friends at all.

Now, it’s different. He at least has people he’s friendly with. Paula has even been to his flat. Once. When he was sick and she needed to pick up a copy of the coffeeshop’s keys.

Now, with the hindsight given to him by time, he wonders: why hadn’t he heard of the engagement?

He flicks his wand and scrolls back to February. Surely, two of the most famous wizards getting engaged had to have made the news. Surely.

He starts the day after Valentines and goes page by page. He goes through an entire month and nothing.

He skims over March and April and May and really wishes that they’d implemented computers with actual search engines in this damn place. June, July. Finally. in August, he finds a short mention of Hermione.

“Granger to put forward bill for the rights of Magical Creatures” reads the headline. It’s a short article, a few lines about legislation towards equality being brought to the Wizengamot. It mentions Harry Potter in passing, as co-sponsoring the bill from his Honorary seat on the Wizengamot. There is no mention of an engagement, but there wouldn’t be, in such a serious article.

There is, however, a picture.

Draco uses his wand to enlarge the picture. It’s a picture of Hermione in formal robes, but no hat. Her hair is, as always, taking up so much space. She is making a point, her determined face much as Draco remembers it from high school, but she is older and stronger in this picture. So alive. Her hands are up in front of her, and they move for emphasis.

There is no engagement ring on her finger.

And off to the corner of the picture, among the audience behind her, is the face of Harry Potter, proud and beaming at Hermione, his hands ready to clap.

/ / / / / / / / /

By the time Piply returns, Draco has scanned the entire year for news of the engagement, and finds nothing. The first mention is after Hermione’s death, which is perplexing. Yes, of course, Granger would have demanded to have her privacy, but it would have been ignored. There is one more source he thinks to look, but it is a long shot and it would require some finagling. He’s not sure he wants to do it.

“Is you finding what you is looking for?” Piply asks, folding her hands onto her lap.

“Yes, thank you,” he says. Pipsy leads him out of the room into the main hall again. He watches other elves milling around, conjuring books to their places. “Are all of the elves here free?”

Piply’s eyes become even brighter and she nods, smiling widely. “We is all free elves. We is all volunteers.”

They are almost at the lifts when Draco asks what he’s really been wondering about all along. “Why do you volunteer here?”

Piply presses the button to call the lift, her arm straining. “We is here because of Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger is being good to us. Hermione Granger is being our friend. Hermione Granger is dying and leaving this library. House Elves is coming to volunteer for Hermione Granger from everywhere in England. Hermione Granger is being a friend to all the elves.”

Draco nods softly. “Thank you for your help.”

She waves the thanks away, but holds her head up, proud. “Now you is holding on to railing. Lift is being very fast,” she instructs, and Draco is violently pulled upwards to the ground floor.

/ / / / / / / / / / /

Draco drops by the coffeeshop after lunch, just a quick walk-by. Paula fixes him an espresso and keeps milling about. Orion sleeps lazily by the door.

“Feeling better?” Paula asks.

Draco shrugs. “Not really.”

And he doesn’t. He knew this would happen. Going down the rabbit hole only leads to more questions. What if Hermione and Ron were never engaged? Why did he lie? Why didn’t Potter correct him? Does it matter? Does any of it mean that Potter didn’t do it?

He has no answers. Only a gaping hole in his chest and an ice-cold hand invisibly squeezing his heart. It’s become hard to breathe when he thinks of Potter’s eyes, Potter’s hands clutching his cloak.

“You should go on holiday,” Paula suggests.

He looks around the shop. “And what would happen then?”

She rolls her eyes. “I am perfectly capable of working the shop on my own, as I have proven on more than one occasion. Also, you could hire someone temporarily if you needed to. No seas tan weón, and go already.”

“What did you just call me?” he asks.

She grins. “It does not translate well.”

He looks around the coffeeshop. They could hire someone else, but it probably wouldn’t be necessary. They were almost never full, and Paula was capable enough.

“I’d have to bring Orion in every day, of course,” she says, and pauses the conversation to go take care of a customer.

“Of course,” Draco mutters to himself. He could use the time off. To wallow in self-pity and obsess properly.

She rings up and prepares an americano for the man at the counter, glancing every so often at Draco. “You should go to the beach,” she calls out over the sound of the coffee machine. “Get some color in you.”

“I am always this color. That or bright red,” he points out.

She hands the man his coffee and walks back towards the table he’s sitting at, giving him a kind and motherly look. Which is odd, because he could, mathematically, be her father. But he’s not going to point that out. “Just promise you won’t stay in your apartment and… wallow? Is that the right word? Yes, wallow.”

“A holiday.” Draco finishes off the bitter dregs of his coffee and savors it for a moment. “Two weeks, maybe? Is that too much?”

She sighs. “How about this. You take as much time as you like. If I need help, I hire someone for a few hours a day. When you come back, I take the holiday. Fair’s fair.”

Draco nods slowly. “Alright. A holiday. Fine.”

“Brilliant,” she says. “Now, go away before I change my mind.”

She all but pushes him out the door.

/ / / / / / / / /

He wanders and wanders through the streets, until he finds himself in one of the usual places. It’s been months, maybe even a year, since the last time he’d found himself at one of these bars. It’s almost empty, because it’s not even night yet, but there’s always someone. Today, it’s a man with glasses that seem crooked. They exchange smiles. A nod of the head.

And he almost does it. He’s halfway to the loo, half aroused at the prospect, when he realizes that this isn’t what he wants, not today. He can drive himself to distraction, with another man’s cock in his mouth. Or he can do what he really wants to do.

He doesn’t need a holiday. He needs a mission.

The man with the crooked glasses looks disappointed as Draco leaves a few notes by the till, covering his own drink and the other man’s as well, by way of an apology.

He leaves the bar quickly and heads home.

/ / / / / / / / /

The first time he wrote with a biro, he was surprised at how fast he could write. His hand could write almost as fast as he could think, something a quill had never achieved.

He’s filled six pages in front of the fire, writing what he knows, what he doesn’t, what he thinks he knows, what he definitely doesn’t know shit about.

He knows taking a holiday to look into an unhealthy obsession is, well, unhealthy. But his mind races and all he can think about is this.

And all he can think of, really, is _‘what next?’_

He has no standing, no contacts, no real way to get any context.

He thinks he could try Azkaban again, but it isn’t wise. Not yet, at least not now.

He looks down at his notes, the word Weasleys surrounded by a circle run over more than once with his biro. But that seems unthinkable and impossible. He’d never get Ron to talk to him, or Ginevra. He doubts the parents would be more receptive.

He needs some other in.

He closes his eyes and thinks back, and he knows there is one person he could go to, one person who would know more than anyone else, and might be just crazy enough to be receptive.

He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. Now, where on earth can he find Luna Lovegood?

/ / / / / / / / /

As it turns out, finding Luna Lovegood is much easier than he’d thought it would be.

He just has to google her name. 

He’d thought about owling Pansy who could maybe owl the Ravenclaw Patil sister without stirring too much trouble, and tracking Lovegood that way, but Pansy would ask so many questions. Then he thought he could probably track down the offices of The Quibbler and find her there, but her father would ask questions as well, and his answers might end up in publication. No.

In this, the year of someone’s Lord, 2015, googling Luna Lovegood is enough to find that she is blatantly breaking the Statute of Secrecy by offering sessions of divination on Craigslist. In Islington.

Draco laughs.

He clicks on the section for images on google and finds a picture of her advertisement. There she is, with a crystal ball, ridiculous curtains and enormous earrings.

He takes out his mobile and dials for an appointment.

/ / / / / / / /

He arrives to a nice row of what looks like university housing, just a quick walk off the Caledonian Road tube station. The air is crisp and biting, and as he looks up to the sky, he wonders if it will rain.

He rings the doorbell and glances at his watch. He is late, by about five minutes. He hopes she doesn’t get angry about that.

There’s a buzzer, and he is allowed into the building. He goes up a flight of stairs, as the instructions indicated, and arrives at the second story landing, where the door to the flat is open.

Everything smells of incense.

Draco sneezes. He hates incense.

“You’re late, Draco,” a voice says. It’s Luna, her voice coming from the kitchen. She has not seen him yet. He wonders if this is part of her divination.

“Sorry. How do you know… I booked under a different name,” he says, approaching the kitchen.

She looks up at him and smiles. She looks a little older, but not much. Some gray in her hair, but also streaks of colors, purple and blue, that match her long flowing dress and jumper. “I see everything,” she answers, self-assured. “Also, the kitchen window looks out onto the footpath,” she adds, pointing down.

Draco tries not to laugh. “It’s… strange to see you,” he says. He’s unsure what else to say.

She shrugs. “I’ve been expecting you. It took you long enough.”

She leads them back out to her living room and closes the door. She sits next to the fire and lights it with a flick of her wrist. Not a wand in sight.

He’d known she was a powerful witch, but had underestimated her anyway.

“Sit then,” she says, pointing to an armchair across from hers. “You saw Harry.”

He’s halfway into sitting but just drops into the chair at her words. “How?”

“You’re the only one of us that could have, really. You’re the only person I know who visits Azkaban.”

“So, your thing is using logical thinking to make people think you’re divining,” Draco guesses.

Luna smiles and rubs her hands closer to the fire. “I like Sherlock Holmes and his powers of deduction. Divination is easy enough to fake, and sometimes things do come across. And it’s good money.”

“Come across?” Draco asks. He feels like he should have been offered a cup of tea. The chair is comfortable, the fire is warm.

“Yes. Auras and bits of information that just float over to me,” she explains. “Do you take sugar?”

Dracon nods. “One.”

Tea floats on over from the kitchen and into his hands. “That’s better, now,” she says. “I could try and guess why you’re here, but since you’re not here for your fortune, you could just tell me.”

“I saw Potter. Have seen him, over the years. This time he… he grabbed my coat. Said something,” Draco finds himself confessing with great speed and wonders if the tea is spiked with Veritaserum. “He told me I owed him a life.”

“Do you?” she asks, leaning in, interested.

“Yes.” It must be Veritaserum, but he doesn’t care. He dives right in. “I need to know something about Granger.”

“You can call her by her name. It’s better to remember who they are. Who they were...”

Draco shrugs. “I never called her that before. Should I start now?”

“No time like the present,” she says, her voice soft and flowing.

“I need to know if she was engaged to Ron Weasley,” he says, deliberately.

Luna blinks. “You want to know if Hermione and Ron were engaged?”

“Exactly.”

“Is this because of what was said in The Daily Prophet?” she asks.

Draco nods.

Luna watches him intently, as if trying to read his mind. He is too tired to attempt Occlumency in any case, and so he lets her look at him as if he were an open book.

“When I read it, I thought that was odd, too. Because one of the last times I saw Hermione was the day she married Harry.”

Draco thinks he has misheard for a second, and he shakes his head to arrange what she has just said inside his mind.

“What?” he asks.

Luna rises from her chair and walks over to the fireplace. She takes a small box from the mantle and walks over to him, handing him a piece of paper. On close inspection, it’s a picture, taken with a Muggle camera, in full color. Probably a disposable camera.

It’s Harry, kissing Hermione’s hair. She’s wearing a summer dress, he’s wearing a shirt that looks pressed. They are smiling. They wear no rings on their hands, but he can see a small gold chain with a small gold band on her neck, and he could see a bit of a gold chain peeking out from inside Harry’s shirt.

It’s a register office. They married Muggle.

“I took it. It was August and it was so warm,” she says. “They gave notice in July and married on the eighth of August. He took the jacket off because it was so hot and Neville teased him about never being formal. I don’t think I’d ever seen them so happy.” She hands him another picture. “We had this marvelous cake after, at the Burrow.”

“So the Weasleys…”

“They were all there, Draco.”

Draco holds the pictures in his hands as Luna hands them over. Hermione eating cake. Blurry pictures of dancing. A picture taken from far away of Harry and Hermione kissing.

A picture of Harry and Hermione surrounded by their surrogate family, the Weasleys.

He lets the pictures fall to his lap. “I don’t understand.”

Luna crouches near Draco and looks at him. “Do you see why I was waiting for you to come?”

Draco shakes his head. “No, I don’t. I don’t understand any of it. Why didn’t you show this to anyone? Why did the Weasleys lie?”

“They didn’t lie,” Luna says softly. “That’s the problem. Nobody lied. I showed these pictures to the Auror department, and to the MLE department. But Muggle pictures aren’t proof, they said, they have advanced image manipulation technology, which is true, so how could I argue? They did Legillimens on Ron and Ginny and they weren’t lying, at least not as far as they knew, which means someone manipulated their memories. The spell that killed her came out of Harry’s wand and he wouldn’t answer any questions. It was a perfect storm.”

“Did you talk to Harry?” he asks, missing his own slip. How can he call him Potter when he knows what he knows now?

Luna shakes her head. “Neville tried. He got a permit from the Ministry and went in to talk to him before sentencing. He wouldn’t say a word.” She purses her lips and takes the pictures back, all but one, the first one from the register office. “They were so happy. I think her death… whatever happened… it broke him. He didn’t have any fight left in him.”

“He does now,” Draco says, confusion dripping from his voice. “I don’t know why, but he does now.”

He stands and extends the photo out to Luna, but she waves it away. “You should keep it. To remember.”

“Remember what?” he asks, tracing the faces in the photo once more.

“Who he was,” she says. She looks up at Draco. “You are different now.”

He shrugs. “It’s been a few years. I was an idiot then.” He pauses as Luna presses her fingers to his forehead.

“And now?”

“Maybe a little less.”

She nods and presses her palm to the top of his head. He feels oddly lifted, and calmed. “You should ask what you want to ask.”

He eyes her curiously, unnerved by her perceptive nature. “Do you think Harry killed Hermione?”

She shakes her head, determined. “I know he didn’t kill her. But maybe he was responsible or he felt responsible. And for Harry, those two things would be the same.” She peers at him with her bright violet eyes, and he understands what it means for someone to be wise beyond their years. Luna gives him a soft kiss on his cheek. “If you need help, you know where to find me. I’m not very good at opening doors, but I’m rather good at healing. Remember that,” she says. “Also, you’ll need to remember what all our strengths were. Think back. You know more than you think you do.” And then she closes her eyes, presses a hand onto his chest and pushes him out the door.

/ / / / / / / /

He doesn’t remember walking to the station, or the tube ride, or walking back to his apartment. It’s all a haze, and he feels as if his feet are weighted down by lead boots. It starts raining a few minutes away from his flat, but he doesn’t care.

He carries the photograph in his pocket and takes it out the second he arrives at his flat. He places it on his fridge, under a small magnet with the book shop’s emblem. He stares at it, at the faces he never understood. Harry’s eyes sparkle, Hermione’s smile so wide she could light up the world. They are older than when he saw them last. Ten years older. Twenty-eight.

They’d be married seven years now. More. They would probably have kids and a dog. They’d probably have a flat or a small house, maybe a yard, for the kids and the dog to play.

He searches his mind to remember what he’d read in the papers. They’d found Hermione Granger dead in Harry Potter’s flat.

He rings Luna, the phone beeping a few times before she picks up. “Draco?” she asks, straight away.

“Where did they live? They were married, they must have lived together. But the paper said she was killed in his flat, not her flat, not their flat. Where did they live? Was it the same as where she was found?” he asked, not waiting to catch his breath.

Luna takes a moment. “She was found in 12 Grimmauld Place. It was the Black Family home, it was Harry’s since he inherited it from Sirius, but they didn’t live there. They lived in Godric’s Hollow. Harry tore down the condemned bits of his parent’s old house and built them a cottage. They lived in it for about a year before they married. It’s still there.”

“Do you think… do you think you can show me?” he asks. “Both places. I think I need to see both places.”

Luna sighs. “I told you, I’m no good at opening doors. But I know someone who is.”


	3. A little help... from someone else's friends

It’s a cold and rainy morning, and Draco Malfoy is breaking and entering with a Ravenclaw and a Gryffindor.

“This is who the job’s for?” Seamus Finnigan asks, perplexed. “Luna, are you mental? I thought you wanted to get something out of the house, not bring a Slytherin in.”

“Well, hello to you, too,” Draco says. “If you could hurry, it’s freezing out here.”

Luna absentmindedly casts a warming charm on Draco’s hands and he smiles, grateful. 

“If I hurry, the wards will cut your nose off. Let me work,” Seamus says. He looks back at Luna. “What is this for, Luna?”

“It’s for Hermione,” she says, and it’s not an absolute lie. She looks at Seamus pointedly, and he holds his hands up, dropping the matter. 

“If he behaves, then I’ll do the Godric’s Hollow house. Maybe,” Seamus warns, and with a second flick of his wand, the door creaks open. The musty smell of dust and humidity overpowers them. It smells like the Manor, Draco thinks. He’s about to step in when Seamus holds a hand up to keep him back. “This place used to be warded up the arse. Get your wand out and cast a shield charm before you go in.”

“What will you do?” he asks Seamus, confused.

Seamus quirks a confused eyebrow. “Keep watch, you git. You can’t just walk into this place and expect no one to show up.” He rolls his eyes at Draco’s confused face. “It’s a famous crime scene. People try to break in all the time.”

“I’ll go with you,” Luna says, giving Seamus a side-eye glance that says ‘behave’. Seamus nods, sheepish. 

They cast their shields and walk slowly into the house.

/ / / / / / / / /

It’s dark and stuffy and doesn’t at all seem like a place that Harry Potter would have inhabited.

“He never lived here,” Luna says, explaining the cobwebs away with her free hand.

“I need you to please stop reading my mind,” Draco points out.

She shrugs. “It comes with the territory.”

Luna leads them both to the living room. 

There is muggle police tape, dusty and faded, cordoning off the living room. He raises it up and Luna crouches a bit to pass under it, he does the same. “Police?” he asks. He recognizes it from the telly. 

“Violent deaths get both investigations. But if the main suspect is a wizard, then the whole investigation goes before the Wizengamot, and we retain prison rights,” Luna explains. Draco raises an eyebrow. “I went to two years of Auror training before I decided it was a very bad idea. I do not like curtailing civil liberties, however misguided they may be.”

Draco snorts, much in spite of himself. 

Luna casts a Lumos charm and her wand lights up the room. She points it towards the floor, at the bloodstain in the carpet. There are two indentations in the nearly circular stain. “That’s where he was,” she points to what look like circular marks near the stain. “He knelt in the blood, you see.” She then points at the other space. “That’s the space her body left.”

The blood still smells metallic, and putrid, but there are no flies and no insects. “Did they do a preservation charm on this?”

Luna shrugs. “It’s standard procedure.”

Draco looks around the room. “No portraits,” he says.

“Harry had them all taken down,” Luna explains. “They were very rude.”

Draco vaguely remembers his great-aunt Black. She had not been a kind woman. “Didn’t quite take to Hermione, did they?”

“Not at all. Harry didn’t come here often, but he didn’t stand for the house insulting her.”

“But now we have no witnesses.”

Luna narrows her eyes. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you said we.”

Draco chooses to let that go. “You said… you said they looked into the spells his wand had cast and that’s how they knew it was him.” Draco looks around the room. “But the paper said he’d slit her throat.”

Luna runs her finger along a small side table. “Yes, so?”

“Did he do it with the wand?” Draco asks.

“He used a spell he’d used before. One he used on you, once,” Luna says. She looks down at the bloodstain again, then at Draco. “Sectumsempra.”

Draco closes his eyes briefly. He remembers the pain, and the healing. 

He remembers the look on Potter’s face when he realized what he’d done.

He remembers and he knows Harry would have remembered, too. 

“He would never…” Draco says, confused.

Luna touches his shoulder lightly. “I know.”

/ / / / / / / 

They walk around the rest of the house with their wands out but find nothing else of use. Finally, they exit the house, no more certain than they left. Seamus has his hands buried in his pockets and his breath comes out like plumes of smoke. 

“You took for-bloody-ever,” Seamus points out. “What now?”

“Godric’s Hollow,” Luna says. 

“Now?” Seamus says. 

Luna narrows her eyes. “Are you hungry?” she asks. She rummages in her bag and extends a Mars bar to Seamus, who takes it without much further argument. She looks over at Draco and gives him some sort of granola bar. “Eat that, then we’ll go.”

“This is hardly a proper meal,” Seamus points out, taking a thoughtful bite of chocolate.

Luna rolls her eyes. “I’ll treat you at a pub in Godric’s Hollow, ok? Both of you. A pint and fish and chips, alright?” She takes both their arms and walks a block away from the front door of 12 Grimmauld Place, before apparating them away.

/ / / / / / / / 

The ground crunches under Draco’s feet as he lands on a pile of crisp dead leaves. 

They are in a quiet alley behind the main street. Draco steadies himself with a few deep breaths. He apparates less and less every year, and it gets consistently more uncomfortable. He’s done it a few times this week and now it just feels like a bit of seasickness.

Luna, their fearless leader, guides them down the cobble streets, rows upon rows of houses. Magical communities always have that strong scent of evergreen, a crackling of magic beneath the surface. Postcard towns. 

Luna finally stops in front of a small cottage with green roof-tiles and green shutters. It is eerily quiet, and Draco wonders if it was always like this. Seamus steps in front of Luna and motions for both Draco and Luna to stay where they are. He draws his wand and marches up ahead. “Wards,” he hisses back.

His wand scans the space and a few words later, he waves his hand welcoming them in. 

This time Seamus enters the house with them. “It’ll just be weird If I’m standing out there,” he says.

Draco nods.

The house is dark and quiet, but not stuffy or damp like Grimmauld place had been. Luna silently casts a Lumos charm and the room is filled with a warm glow, as all the lightbulbs and lamps flicker into being. 

Draco knows it is strange to even think it, but the house feels loved. 

The furniture looks worn but not as dusty as it should be. “We come once in a while, to clean a bit,” Luna explains. She points to a sofa with caramel-color corduroy upholstery. “I helped Harry pick this out.”

“They loved this place so much,” Seamus says, blowing a bit of dust off a picture frame on the mantle. “This was the day we helped them move in.”

He hands Draco the picture. Ginny, George and Ron Weasley, Dean, Luna, Neville, Seamus all gathered around Harry and Hermione, Harry blurred by the motion of getting in just in time before the automatic click of the camera. Hermione’s mouth open in laughter, as she extends her arms towards Harry. Everyone’s clothes are stained with paint of different colors. Paint that matches this house.

Draco walks from the living room to the kitchen, past the small dining table.

There’s a small desk with papers. He looks through them, but nothing jumps out. Elf rights, Magical Creature legislation: Granger’s thing. He goes slowly up the stairs, then past a small empty room painted a pastel shade of yellow, its door ajar, and towards the larger bedroom.

Luna finds him standing in the doorway, unable to walk into the room. 

The bed is unmade. There, on the pillow, one of Hermione’s long, curly hairs rests peacefully. On the other side of the bed, an extra pair of glasses sit on top of a book.

“I left this just the way it was,” Luna tells him. Draco nods. Now that Luna is inside the room, it feels easier for him to walk through it. 

“What did Potter… Harry… what did he do? I mean, what was his work?” Draco asks.

Luna opens her mouth to answer, but her voice is interrupted by Seamus.

“You better come down here,” Seamus calls up from the base of the stairs.

Luna rushes down. Draco takes one more look at the room and, without really giving it much thought, he pockets the pair of glasses. 

He bounds down the stairs as well.

/ / / / / / / / 

“Look,” Seamus says, when Draco arrives. Seamus has opened the sliding glass door to a small backyard. The grass is overgrown, and all the plants seem to have decided to encroach on one another. But Seamus isn’t focused on the grass or the plants. He’s pointing to a spot near the fence where a very odd-looking ginger cat stares at them with barely-restrained disdain. 

“Is that Crookshanks?” Luna asks.

Seamus nods and suddenly Draco is invaded by the memory of this cat. He has seen it before.

“Is that Granger’s cat from school?” he asks, making a move to approach the creature and getting severely hissed at. “It must be ancient.”

“He is quite old,” Luna concurs. “But he’s half-cat, half-kneazle, so he’s got some life ahead of him still.”

Draco looks around the yard for something… He finds a small mouse made of felt under a broom that’s barely leaning against the fence. He dangles it for a moment in front of the cat, and Crookshanks pads a bit closer, stretching his front paw to reach for the toy. Draco extends the toy closer to him, then pulls it back. The cat seems intrigued and gets closer. 

Draco crouches low and places one outstretched palm with the peace offering. The cat takes it gently with his mouth and surprisingly does not run away. Crookshanks allows Draco to scratch him, and purrs softly. He has a thin collar around his neck with a little sphere attached. Draco moves it a bit, but it makes no sound. 

“He hasn’t shown himself in a couple of years,” Luna says softly.

Seamus smiles as he takes a step closer to them. “He’s taken a liking to you, Crookshanks has.”

Draco nods slowly. “Why is he still here?” he asks, more to himself than anyone else.

“It’s his home,” Seamus offers.

Draco shakes his head, defiant. “He’s Granger’s familiar. He should have left when she died.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for Harry,” Luna suggests.

Draco scoops the cat up in one fell swoop. “He’s been here waiting for seven years? Seems odd.”

“He’s an odd cat,” Luna says. Crookshanks licks his paw defiantly. “Old now, too.”

Draco looks from Seamus to Luna. “Should I take him?” he asks.

Luna nods. “Oh, yes. The cat chooses the wizard,” she offers, and Draco knows he cannot argue.

/ / / / / / / / / 

Draco finds himself eating at a pub in Godric’s hollow with a carrying-case full of cat. 

He is unamused. 

He is also confused.

Luna pushes the malt vinegar at him and motions for him to use it on his chips. He agrees, basically because he doesn’t want to disagree. 

Seamus keeps staring at him, then away, which is disconcerting. “Yes?” he asks.

Seamus kind of grins. He doesn’t look away this time, just takes a chip from his plate and uses it for emphasis. “What’s this all got to do with you?”

Draco doesn’t know exactly how to answer. 

Seamus carries on. “You used to hate Harry in school. And you were a freaking Death Eater.”

Draco’s eyes widen. “Maybe louder next time, they haven’t heard you in the kitchen.”

“It’s true, isn’t it, though.”

Draco stares at his pint of a very long minute. “Potter vouched for me during my trial. Only reason I’m free,” he admits, and takes a prolonged drink.

“Potter was one of the good ones,” Seamus says. He glances over at Luna. “This one here, she thinks he still is. Me, I can’t tell anymore, what’s true and what isn’t. War does that to you.” 

“Seamus…” Luna starts, her hand reaching over to his. 

Seamus just shakes it away. “I can’t hold a job. I nick stuff for a living, you know, break into houses. Tried being an Auror, wasn’t cut out for it,” he explains, and Draco understands how Seamus has opened all these doors for them today. “Harry doing that… It could be true. And Hermione’s gone, and everything is fucked up the ears. It’s been almost twenty years and I can still see people dying when I close my eyes, people just dying all around me.” Seamus looks into Draco’s eyes, as if he’s trying to find some answer there. “The war never ended for some. Maybe that’s what happened to Harry.”

Draco wants to apologize, as if a few words could heal what is broken in this man in front of him. For a minute he sees the boy who blew things up, the boy with the eternal smile. It’s a brief second, and then it is gone. 

“But… do you know, what it would be if it wasn’t true. If Harry didn’t do it?” Seamus says, taking his glass and pointing it at Draco. “It would be something.” 

Draco swallows hard. 

Seamus drains his pint in three long gulps. “If you find Harry didn’t do it, you get him out,” Seamus instructs. “Whatever it takes.” He stands and places some coins atop the table, and doesn’t even let Luna protest. “Luna can find me. If you need me.”

And he walks away.

/ / / / / / / 

When he arrives at his flat, Draco realizes he is completely unprepared to house a cat. Luna, who has followed him into the building and the flat, realizes this also. She pops down to the shop and buys cat litter and food. Then she runs back up and, out of breath, rummages through his things to find something of a makeshift box for the litter. 

She finds a paint mixing tray under his sink and calls it a win. She places the box in a closet beside his washer and finds some bowls for water and food. “This will have to do,” Luna muses, taking the carrying case from Draco and letting Crookshanks out. “He’s been a bit of a wild one, he might make a mess for a couple of days. But he’s smart, once he gets his bearings, he’ll know what to do.”

Draco looks around his flat and feels somewhat challenged by the invasion, of Luna, of Crookshanks, the way his mind is now complete filled with the life and times of Harry Potter. 

Luna smiles kindly. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I have a séance tomorrow, so I should prepare.”

“What now?” Draco asks, shakily. He drops onto his chair with a soft thud. Crookshanks takes it as a suggestion and climbs up on his lap. “What should I do now?”

Luna’s intentions to leave now thwarted, she sits on a small armchair across from Draco. “What do you believe?”

Draco sighs. He feels at the glasses in his pocket. “I don’t think he killed her. And on Halloween, no less. It… I was in that house, same as you. There was so much…” He lets it drift away, but Luna catches it. 

“It was a home. It was filled with love.”

Draco nods slowly. “Why didn’t anyone do anything? Why didn’t he say anything?”

Luna shrugs, her colorful patchwork bag resting on her knees. “Maybe it had to be you.”

“Why me?”

“Because he asked it of you.” Luna sighs softly and points her wand to the fireplace. “Harry never asked for help. It was his biggest fault. He would have walked into a burning building for any of us, but did not expect us to do that for him. He never asked us for any help or sacrifice.”

She looks at her hands for a second. “My mother liked this… phrase she read, once. I think it’s from some Muggle religion. ‘If not now, when? If not me, who?’ These were the things Harry asked himself every day since he was eleven.” She stands and walks over to Draco, and places her hand on his shoulder. “He asked you for help. Maybe you were in the right place at the right time. Maybe he needs you. He sure as hell needs someone. If not now, when? If not you, then who?”

The questions hand in the air, unanswered, for a very long minute.

“I can’t do it alone,” Draco says. “I don’t even know how, or what…” 

Luna smiles from the doorway. “Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it,” she says, cryptically. And then she winks. “Neville took over Professor Sprout’s Herbology post two years ago. He’ll have what you need.”

And just like that, the idea that Luna has already seen in his mind, starts to form and take hold. He knows what he has to do. 

/ / / / / / / / /

Draco sleeps fitfully that night. There is a list of things he goes through, in those moments between wakefulness and sleep. It goes something like this:

First, the Weasleys.

Second, the Wand.

Third, the whole breaking-the-most-famous-murderer-in-the-wizarding-world out of jail.

He tosses and turns and opens his eyes, only to be met by Crookshanks’ pale yellow eyes staring back. He jumps a little. “You startled me,” he tells the cat, and already he suspects he’s turning into the male equivalent of a cat lady. Crookshanks expresses nothing, he just settles into a space under Draco’s arm and snuggles close.

He has never had a pet, a real pet. His mother had lovely peacocks that threatened to murder him every time he’d gone near them. Nagini, the fucker’s pet snake, had lived with them for a time. It had not been pleasant. 

This, however, is different. This somewhat-cat creature that has crawled into his bed feels like a friend, and there is a history that did not pass between them but that did happen. He falls asleep stroking the old cat’s fur.

He dreams.

He dreams of the Hermione in the Muggle picture, static and unmoving, her smile never-faltering.

He dreams of her head turning, ripping itself off the picture, and staring straight at him.

Her two-dimensional mouth opens. She says, softly, “Save him.”

And the picture bursts into flames.

/ / / / / / / / 

Draco wakes with a sense of purpose and a bit of cat hair on his sheets. Crookshanks is staring at him from the foot of the bed, looking wise as ever. “Do you miss her?” he asks, his voice still heavy with sleep.

Crookshanks does something akin to a meow.

“Alright, then,” Draco replies absently.

He goes through his morning routine slowly and finds, as he steps out onto his living room, that his favorite chair is occupied by Crookshanks now.

He sighs and accepts it. His life is strange enough at the moment without thinking that the cat’s got it in for him as well.

He steeps his tea and outlines a shadow of a plan in his head. And that shadow of a plan requires sending an owl. 

He looks at Crookshanks inquisitively. “You don’t happen to have an owl friend here in London, do you?”

Crookshanks yawns and looks towards the window. 

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Draco sighs. It will have to be Diagon Alley.

/ / / / / / / / / / / 

Draco parks a few streets down from The Leakey Cauldron and walks. Somedays it’s just easier to pay the congestion charge and use magic to find a parking spot, rather than take the tube when he’s not focused and is likely to miss his stop. 

He doesn’t need an owl for keeps, just a rental for two-way communication. He steps through to the Leaky. He hasn’t been in Diagon Alley in over three years, when he took a quick walk into Ollivander’s to get his wand serviced. He hates the crowds, and the stares of recognition he gets sometimes are enough to keep him away. 

Nothing changes in Diagon Alley, not for long. It had a brief moment of turmoil during the Second Wizarding War, but it bounced back. He wishes for a moment that it had not. So much has just gone back to the way it had been before, but the people… Draco thinks back to what Seamus had told him, how he had not been able to move on, and he feels more of a kinship with Seamus than he does with all the wizards and witches sitting in this pub. He shakes his head to clear it, and passes on through.

Diagon Alley stands before him as bright as it has always been. He makes quick work of moving through the crowd and onto the post-office that sits beside Eeylops Owl Emporium, where the Owls-For-Hire rest in darkness.

For a moment, he feels observed, but shakes the feeling off. 

He goes to pick an owl and the prickling on his spine returns. He turns around swiftly and finds himself face to face with Ron Weasley. 

“I thought that was you,” Ron says, and Draco has no response to that. 

“Weasley,” he replies. 

He remembers now that the post-office sits just across the way from the Weasley’s joke shop. He groans inwardly. 

“You never come around here,” Ron says, his tongue peeking out of his mouth nervously. “Death Eaters are not welcome.”

Draco knows he shouldn’t allow himself to be dragged into… whatever this is. Still, he feels the need to defend himself, even if just a bit. “I was exonerated,” he says, reaching for an owl, then thinking better of it. Weasley is too close, and sending a note off to Hogwarts now would raise questions. “I’ll go,” he sighs, and walks back out on the street.

“With testimony from a murderer,” Weasley says. “You should’ve had your freedom revoked.”

Draco has no answer for that either, because it is true, or at least partly true. He turns, wanting to spit out fire and brimstone, wanting to scream. But he sees something in Ron Weasley’s eyes. Conviction.

What he says, he believes.

Ron has probably seen the same picture that Luna showed Draco. Yet he believes he has been greatly aggrieved. That he lost a love, a fiancée. That he is the injured party.

Truth is what you believe in. 

Draco wants to read Ron Weasley’s mind. To understand. 

He chooses, instead, to say, “I’m sorry for your loss. Granger was a remarkable person.”

And then he just walks away, leaving Ron drained of all color.

/ / / / / / / 

He buys a medium-sized tawny owl at Eeylops, a taciturn thing with a small white spot between its ears, and a small cage for it, and hopes Crookshanks isn’t in the mood to eat birds. Having his own owl will provide greater privacy, but he wishes Hogwarts was just on-the-grid for regular postal service, so he wouldn’t now be a cranky man with an owl and a cat in a one-bedroom flat. 

He carries the cage through the busy street, trying to stay on the footpath. He takes one small detour into the apothecary for some basic supplies and back out. He seems to attract no further attention and makes his way through The Leaky Cauldron. He places a disillusionment charm on the owl and its cage and steps back out onto the Muggle world.

His adopted world.

His world.

He breathes a little more freely now, as he walks towards his car. He stuffs the cage into the passenger’s seat and is about to get into the car when he feels a tap on his shoulder.

It is Ron Weasley, once again. 

This time, he smiles.

And then he just punches Draco in the face. 

“You don’t get to say her name, you bloody Death Eater,” Ron says. “Living as a Muggle. After everything you used to say to her. After everything you did.”

Draco touches his face, his cheek already feels swollen. He tastes blood inside his mouth. But he says nothing.

“You should have died in the Fiendfyre,” Ron says. He gives Draco one last look, then trots back towards The Leaky. 

Draco moves his jaw slowly, just checking. Everything appears to be in the right place. He shakes off the shock and gets in his car. 

He takes a few moments before driving off.

/ / / / / / / / 

An owl, a cat and Luna Lovegood have all decided to make his flat their center of operations. Draco feels this is a bit of an overreach on their part, as he walks into his flat. Luna is already making tea and feeding Crookshanks. “My séance was cancelled,” she explains. “Oolong?”

He nods and places the owl cage on the window ledge. “I ran into a friend of yours.”

Luna takes one look at Draco’s swelling face and frowns. “Ron, was it?”

Draco nods. “Unstoppable force, immovable object.”

Luna just peers at him curiously. “Not much of a diviner, am I? I did not bring my healer bag. Do you have any dittany?”

Draco shakes his head. “Wasn’t planning on bleeding.” He can hear her making noise from the bathroom and decides if he keeps hindering her, he’ll only make it worse. “There’s some antibacterial ointment over the sink. And a box of plasters.”

Luna works quickly, whispering a quick “Episkey”, then adding ointment and plaster. With Draco’s guidance, she finds a bag of frozen peas for his face. 

“He really believes it,” Draco says, through the peas. “Weasley. He’s convinced.”

Luna shrugs. “He is.” She waves it off with her hand, as she does so many other things. “What’s her name?”

“Whose name?”

“Your owl?”

“Royal Mail,” Draco says, absentmindedly. 

“Lovely name,” Luna comments, and now Draco knows he’s stuck and he just named his owl and there is no turning back. “You could have borrowed one of mine, you know? I have access to Daddy’s owls from The Quibbler.”

“Well, a bit late now.” Draco leaves the peas on his kitchen counter and walks over to the owl. “Alright, Royal, let’s see what you’re made of. Quick flight to Hogwarts.” He ties a small piece of parchment to the owl’s leg and opens the window. The owl steps onto the ledge, ruffles her feathers a bit, and takes off. 

“Neville always enjoys getting post,” Luna points out, handing Draco a mug as they both watch Royal Mail disappear into the distance.


	4. The Best Laid Plans

He holds out from checking in on the Coffee Shop one more day, before caving in and dropping by, as casually as he can muster.

Paula rolls her eyes as he strides in, trying to appear non-chalant.

“I thought it was a bit much to ask you to just stay away for two weeks,” she says, tilting her head in confused wisdom.

Draco hangs up his coat and ties on his apron. “I missed you.”

She bumps his shoulder. “Sure you did.”

He works the rest of the day and offers to close up and give her a few days off. She narrows her eyes. “What is really going on?” she asks.

“I think I should take a holiday but I think it’s better if I really plan it,” he attempts. “Like maybe in a month or so. Or for Christmas.”

She looks at him like he’s growing an extra head. “I’ve actually never even heard you say Christmas. Last year I suggested a special Christmas latte. I believe you suggested you’d rather I engage in lewd acts with the coffee machine before you ever put Christmas products on the board.”

“What can I say?” he asks, and really, what can he say? He wracks his brain for a passably less-than-false answer. “I have to visit my father this Christmas,” he offers.

She’s taken aback, she knows he doesn’t talk of his family often. Or, ever. “Fine. I’ll drop it.” She wipes the counter down and raises a quick eyebrow. “Just… I think it’s healthy. To take a break sometimes.”

“You think it’s healthy to have a dog hanging around while you carry cups of scalding coffee,” Draco argues. “Your ideas of health I find questionable.”

“Oh, shut up,” she says, tossing him the small rag and proceeding to untie her apron. “I’m taking tomorrow off, I need a healthy break from your face.”

Draco laughs heartily. There’s something in Paula that reminds him of… well, of people he’s liked before. People who were strong and didn’t back down. “I could sack you for that.”

“And miss out on my lovely company? You would never,” she counters, grabbing her coat and exiting with a flair, pumping her fist into the air. “See you.”

/ / / / / / / / /

Draco works through the week, his mind drifting away and then back again. At least, with the progress he’s made, negligible as it may be, he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning anymore. He manages not to poison anyone, and not to mix up orders. He even manages to bake tea cakes for his Thursday customers.

When he arrives at his flat on Friday evening, Royal Mail has arrived, bearing a small roll of parchment. Draco pets the owl’s head and gives her a treat in exchange for peaceful parchment-removal. The note reads, “Hogsmeade, Sunday, noon. Luna knows the place.”

When Sunday rolls around it turns out that Luna does know a place. They apparate somewhere on the edge of town. Draco hasn’t been here in years and the smell of autumn is this village of his childhood is almost unbearably nostalgic. He pushes his hands into his coat pockets and follows Luna. Since it’s Sunday there are no Hogwarts children wandering up and down the streets.

This is a relief. He remembers reading about traitors and cowards and evildoers in Professor Binns’ History class, and is not in the mood to find out if his face and name are being taught in lessons. He is also in no rush to run into his past teachers.

Neville is waiting for them in a small pub a few doors down from The Three Broomsticks. Draco doesn’t remember it from before, and it’s a punch in the gut to look back and know he hasn’t been here in at least eighteen years, and surely he must have known things would change and some would be new. Luna slides into the seat next to Neville and leaves Draco to stare across the table at Longbottom, who is doing his very best to make his friendly, handsome face look like a scowl.

There is something of an ouroboros sensation that Draco has assigned to this investigation of his. He is the serpent eating his own tail, turning back the clock and finding himself face to face with the people who he hurt and aggrieved, so many years ago. It has not been water under the bridge. As he looks to the past, he finds his past self-staring him in the face and smirking.

Neville has ordered butterbeers and chips for them all, and the sweet tang of the butterbeer sticks to the roof of Draco’s mouth.

“I have what you need,” Neville says, motioning to a cloth bag beside him. “And a spare cauldron. I didn’t know if you’d kept any of your old stuff, from your shop in Glasgow.”

Draco shakes his head. “Sold the lot.”

“That was a good shop,” Neville nodded.

Draco furrows his brow in confusion. “I never saw you come in.”

Neville smiles a bit. “I got very good with Polyjuice then.” He nods to the bag. “I figured out how to keep the fluxweed fresh for longer. That one I just picked, though. I’m out of potion or I’d have brought some.”

“Did Luna tell you? What it was for?” Draco asks.

Neville shrugs. “I know enough. Got you some other things I think will come in handy.” Draco peers into the bag and almost smiles.

They sit in silence, the butterbeers untouched.

Luna looks from Neville, to Draco, to Neville again. “Tell him,” she orders Neville. He sighs and grabs a chip, for emphasis.

“I was the last person to see him, you know. Before they took him up to Azkaban.”

Draco nods.

“Well, he wouldn’t talk, but he kept tapping his finger. And it struck me, you know, thinking back, it sort of stayed with me.” Neville taps his finger softly on the table. “When Luna owled me, about seeing you and… what he’d said…. I mentioned it. And she told me about this way of communicating Muggles would use… long ago, before mobiles. A code.”

“Morse code,” Luna says. “Ships would use it. You can use it with sounds or with light. My mother taught me. She liked useful things like that.”

“So you tap, and the combination of taps, it will form letters, then words,” Neville proceeded.

It sounds familiar to Draco, like something mentioned in some of the books he’s read, but something he has skipped over or hasn’t bothered to look up.

Neville taps his finger, replicating the rhythm he was remembering. “He kept doing the same thing, over and over. I was there for two hours and he said nothing, but he was spelling it out for me the whole time.”

Draco stares at Neville’s finger, intrigued. His eyes travel back up to Neville’s face. “What did it say?”

Neville stops his tapping and looks straight at Draco, guilt written all over his face. “Not Hermione. SOS.”

Draco lets out a shaky breath. Not Hermione. Not Hermione. “SOS?”

“It’s the distress call, for ships. It means, Save Our Souls,” Neville says, burying his face in his hands. “He was telling us everything. We just didn’t understand.”

Luna places a soft hand on Neville’s shoulder.

When Neville cries, it smells like a garden.

/ / / / / / / / /

Luna follows him into his flat after they apparate back into the city and leave a relatively calmer Neville on his way back to Hogwarts. This is becoming a habit, Luna just making herself at home in ten seconds flat, when it’s taken years for Draco to feel even somewhat comfortable in his own home. She busies herself with tea and biscuits and silence. Crookshanks jumps up into Draco’s lap. Royal buries her face under her wing.

The cloth bag Neville gave him rests on the kitchen counter, untouched. He knows he has to start brewing soon. It’s just been so long. Potions had been his bread and butter, and now everything seems so foreign. But the ingredients need to be fresh, so waiting too long is out of the question.

“I’ll start on the potion tomorrow,” he says, as Luna hands him a mug. It’s not so bad after all, this odd new routine. “When it’s done I’ll make the draughts.”

“Draco,” she says, serious. She’s hardly ever this serious. “You understand? What you’re getting yourself into?”

He does. The fact that Potter wouldn’t speak to Neville in the Ministry before being taken to Azkaban suggests he knew someone was listening in, someone dangerous. That he used Muggle means of communication knowing full well that he may not be understood.

Fucking hero.

He had tried to protect Neville.

He was still protecting someone or... something.

 _Not Hermione._ It rang in his head. _SOS. You owe me a life._

“Draco… Do you understand how dangerous this could be?” Luna repeats.

Draco nods and takes a slow sip from his tea. “The Ministry is infiltrated. If it wasn’t Hermione, then who was it? If it wasn’t Hermione, where is she?” Draco stands too quickly and Crookshanks jumps off his lap and hisses in complaint. “Ugh, my brain is breaking, Luna Lovegood.”

Luna smiles. “Do you miss it?”

“My brain being unbroken?”

“Living inside magic,” she clarifies.

Draco stares at her for a long minute. “I don’t think about it much.”

“I like where I am. Being a diviner without actually having to deal with the fallout of prophecies. People respect me, now. But I miss the times before the war, sometimes. Being taken care of,” she says, softly, like she’s trying to pluck clouds out of a dream. “We didn’t get to be children for a long enough time. Maybe you less than everyone else.”

“I think Potter had me beat there.”

Luna sips her tea, and looks at her knees. “I think that’s why you were such good friends.”

“We were never friends,” Draco declares. “We hated each other. And then… we didn’t see each other.”

“You saved each others' lives.”

Draco places his mug down on the counter and can feel himself shutting down. “That’s neither here nor there.”

Luna stands and leaves her mug in the sink. She still has that sad smile fixed on her face. “I should go. Tarot reading tomorrow at sunrise with the Wiccan Society of Islington.”

Draco feels compelled to hug her, but doesn’t. She makes no sense most of the time, but she’s his brand-new tether to a world he’d left behind, and he wants her to leave and to stay at the same time. So, he deals with it the only way he knows how, diving deep. “His wand… we would need to figure out what the last spell really was. And we need an ally in Azkaban. And… There’s so much to do.”

Luna purses her lips for a moment, an idea leaping in her mind like a wild hare. “I never thought to check his wand.”

“I read far too many Nordic police novels,” Draco admits. “They pass the time. Anyway, it’s too late. Snapped in two and gone forever.”

Luna waves it away, as she does most things she doesn’t understand. “I have an idea that you’re going to not like very much at all.”

Draco sighs. “That sounds just like my life.”

/ / / / / / / / / / /

It is a very cold, wet day in November when Draco finds himself face to face with Katie Bell for the first time in almost eighteen years.

Luna has, of course, accompanied him. Taking this meeting alone is out of the question.

It’s also not precisely a meeting.

In his three-year absence from it, Ollivander’s has been renamed Ollivander and Bell, Wand Purveyors.

Ollivander is too ancient for customer service, Luna has explained, and Katie Bell has recently returned from working in South America making wands of tropical woods. Guayacán wands are, apparently, all the rage.

He has appropriately rolled his eyes before entering the establishment. Draco is no fool.

Or so he thinks.

Katie is a grown woman now. She has not changed that much from her days at Hogwarts, but her deep red cloak makes her look poised. Her hair is short, falling just below her ears. There is a small scar on her hand, from where she touched the necklace all those years ago, and she lets her robe sleeve fall and cover it as soon as she sees Draco walk in.

Luna has warned her, and she recovers quickly, giving them a half smile. “Luna, Malfoy,” she greets them.

Draco says nothing and Luna elbows him, to no avail. “Is Mr. Ollivander…” Luna starts.

Katie shakes her head. “He took the day off, as you requested.” She extends her arm and guides them behind the counter with clipped courtesy. “This way.”

Draco had always wondered what this place was like from the inside. Ollivander had been a secretive old bugger, and his very odd way of conveying information seemed both creepy and manipulative at times.

“Luna told me you’re investigating,” she says, in Draco’s general direction. “And that you need information on a wand.”

“Yes… I don’t know how much she’s told you,” Draco begins, still following Katie and Luna deeper into the bowels of the shop. They’ve passed the stock, and what looked like a woodwork shop, they’ve passed a lab-like section with vials of hairs and feathers corked. They’ve arrived to a small office with… a computer.

“In South America, technological advancement is always struggling to reach our ‘first world’ tech. But Wizards there, they don’t shy away from tech, and are so much more up-to-date. The number of wards I had to re-work to get this going properly.” She presses a button and the computer comes to life, the whirring and whizzing of the CPU’s fan giving off a wave of familiarity. Draco wants to laugh, feeling for once like he’s not insane for wanting this mix of technology and magic. “I was here working during my holiday when the wand came in for analysis. But I was a trainee, so I didn’t touch it. Ollivander did all the work.”

She sits on a wheeled stool and clicks away at the keyboard. Luna touches the screen absently. He’s never actually turned his computer on at home while Luna has been over, so he’s never actually seen her this intrigued.

The screen flickers under Luna’s touch.

“Best not touch it, Luna,” Katie says. “You always wear your magic on your sleeve, it could interfere.”

Luna takes her hand away and smiles shyly. “Sorry.”

“It’s ok. It happened to me a few times as well.” She pulls up a file. “I systematized Ollivander’s notes and analysis. I’ve been trying to get that done for all the files for the past two years, I haven’t gotten far and… Well, you know him… He can be…”

“Creepy?” Draco offers.

“Mysterious,” Luna says kindly.

“Obtuse,” Katie declares. “Here.” She points to her screen and Draco leans in closer. There are pictures of the wand. It’s Harry’s own wand from school, with some markings of disrepair. “The wand was in good shape. How he kept a Holly and Phoenix feather wand going that long is interesting. There’s a written report on the findings of previous casts.”

Draco scans the document, a typed-out version of what must have been Ollivander’s findings.

He points at one particularly stumping phrase, riddled with acronyms and initials. “What does this mean?”

Katie reads it over twice, mouthing some words under her breath. “It explains that the last cast was Sectumsempra, those are initials for it. Mr. Ollivander’s system, you see. And here, it states the cause of death as hemorrhage.”

“But there, it says subject of curse of undetermined species.”

“Yes… I also thought that was odd. Because look here…” She clicks away to another folder. “This is a different case that Ollivander consulted on before. See how he gives out species as human and even recognizes the person. But he didn’t in Hermione’s case.”

“Undetermined species…” he mutters under his breath.

“The Ministry suggested that maybe Ollivander was… you know… getting a bit old. That he wasn’t thorough. There was the matter of the Legillimens on the Weasleys and the Veritaserum testimonies and the physical evidence, so they just used the bits they needed. The wand produced a deadly curse, Hermione was dead, the wand was there, Harry was there. They just needed confirmation about the curse.”

“What is your take on it?” Draco asks, genuinely curious.

Katie glances at Draco sideways. “What is it to you?” she asks. “Last I checked, you and Harry weren’t the best of friends.”

“I’m trying to set the world to rights,” he says, a soft half-snort leaving him. He doesn’t even believe that himself. “I don’t know… it’s just. It’s wrong, this.” His hand motions to the room, to Diagon Alley, to the world entire.

Katie gives him a half-smile. “My take is that Ollivander may be getting old, but he has not lost all his marbles. He saw a curse leave the wand, but whatever or whoever the curse hit, there was some aura of dark magic around them. Something that concealed who they were. If the curse did kill Hermione, maybe she was no longer herself. Maybe it’s something else.” She sighs. “If I could have the wand again, examine it, I could tell you more. There have been so many breakthroughs in wandmaking… But it was broken and burned, once Harry was sentenced.”

“So it’s his word against the mounting evidence.”

“As I understand it, it’s his silence against the mounting evidence.” Katie clicks the computer off and starts back towards the front of the shop. “I would tell you to let it go, but you seem intent on following through and getting in trouble.”

“I owe a debt,” Draco explains.

Katie stops in the middle of the wand workshop and glances around. She picks up a box, slender and green, much more modern than Ollivander’s leather-bound boxes. “Galapagos Red Mangrove and a Guatemalan Quetzal feather. A very tropical wand, if you will,” she states. She slides the box open and shows Draco the slender wand with its reddish hue. “He will need a wand, a steadying wand. If you manage to do what I think you will attempt to do, his magic will be confused and filled with rage. This may help.”

Draco searches his pockets for money, but Katie holds her hand up. “He saved our lives many times over,” she states, and that is that.

Luna has stood in silence the entire time, watching them both as if they are her lab rats, her test subjects. “Draco, you should apologize now,” she says, her voice airy.

Draco turns a deep red, he imagines he’s as red as the wand. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out.

Katie raises an eyebrow at Draco, then turns to Luna. “I prefer actions to apologies.” She hands Draco the box, closed once more, and looks him straight in the eye. “Go set the world to rights.”

He takes the box and presses it against his chest, and silently wishes that he’ll be able to.


	5. Sacrificial Lamb

The Polyjuice Potion fills his kitchen - and, by extension, his entire flat- with the smell of either rotting Brussel sprouts or fresh garbage.

Luna Lovegood does not seem to notice.

Luna Lovegood is playing with the cat.

Draco stirs clockwise.

“Have you made the list?” Luna asks, as if he ever has any idea what she’s talking about.

“Uh… No?” he offers, then stirs counterclockwise.

“Of what you’ve still got to do, before Christmas.”

“Like, my shopping?”

She looks up from Crookshanks, her eyebrows knitting together. “I never know if you’re having me on.”

“If it makes you feel any better, ditto.”

She gets up and finally sniffs at the potion. “I once bought incense for a séance that smelled just like this.”

“Did you get your money back?” He drops another bit of boomslang skin into the cauldron. “I have to let it rest now.”

She ignores him. “The list of what you need for the plan.”

It finally dawns on Draco what she’s going on about. “Not on paper. But yes.”

“So what do we need?”

He looks at her, catching the we. “You have a séance with Ms. Lowell,” Draco reminds her, not even surprised that he remembers.

“Oh, she’s going to cancel,” Luna says, matter of fact.

“I… Wha… Never mind.” He looks at his wristwatch. “I have to go to the coffee shop. I have to close today.”

“I’ll go with you,” Luna brightens. “And then you can tell me all your plans with coffee and biscuits.”

/ / / / / / / / /

Draco walks into the coffee shop with Luna Lovegood in tow and he frankly doesn’t know how to explain her to Paula.

Luna settles into a corner table and takes out of her bag a stack of tarot cards wrapped in a colorful scarf. She unwraps the scarf on the table and lays the cards out.

“Are you…” Paula asks, as Draco returns to the till after setting a cappuccino and a biscuit on Luna’s table.

“I can’t even,” Draco says, and he really can’t.

Paula smiles widely. “I’m going to get my fortune read.”

Paula sits across from Luna, much to Draco’s chagrin, and Luna eyes look at her, transfixed in that precise space between presence and absence where they always seem to live. Luna takes a moment to acknowledge her, but when she does, it is with a wide smile and a warmth that Draco has started to appreciate in the past few weeks. Luna holds out the deck for Paula to cut, and then she luminously places cards on the table, pointing out things.

After a few moments a small group of customers has gathered around Luna and Paula, interested to hear what Luna is reading in the cards. Mrs. Anders, an elderly Dutch lady, peers over the cards. “What does that one mean?”

Draco wants to roll his eyes, but doesn’t. A few minutes later Paula is walking back to him and Mrs. Anders has taken her spot. “Apparently, I’m very intuitive and I will have to take on many responsibilities over the Christmas Holiday. She’s brilliant, your friend.”

Draco opens his mouth to say something, but thinks better of it and closes it again.

“Why hadn’t you brought her round before?”

“We recently… reconnected,” he answers, taking a sip of his very strong, very hot second afternoon coffee.

“If you weren’t gay, I’d say you’d make a cute couple, would have lovely pale children,” Paula adds.

Draco nearly spits out his coffee, but instead swallows it and burns the back of his throat. “What?”

“Oh, are we still in the closet?” she says, just a hint of worry in her voice.

“No. No closet. Just…” Draco’s hand flies up to attempt some sort of explanation. “Just didn’t think you knew.”

Paula grins. “We are legion,” she enthuses, before moving on to a side table. Draco can hear one of the regulars, Andrea, from the Regional Council, asks Paula, “Will she be here next week? My sister would love to get a reading.”

Draco looks at his small, quiet, normal coffee shop and just knows that it has been colonized by Luna Lovegood, just like his flat, and he won’t be able to get her out, so he better just get used to it. “She’ll be here,” he calls over from the till, while he can hear Luna softly tell Mrs. Anders that travel is on the horizon.

/ / / / / / / /

Luna finishes tying up her cards and sets herself to helping Draco close. She carries her cup back over to the back and washes it. Then she starts placing the chairs atop the tables.

“I didn’t know what to make of you, when you came over that first time,” she admits. “This was not it.”

Draco shrugs. “It’s been a long time. Since you knew me, back then. I am sorry, you know, for everything.” He drags down his sleeve instinctively. The mark is impossible to erase. He has tried, so, so hard. He still covers it, most of the time, but living in Muggle London and manning the coffeeshop, it’s just so much easier to pass it off as some very metal old tattoo with some faded scars on top.

“Yes,” Luna nods. “Things have happened.” She starts to put a chair atop a table, but pauses. She instead takes another chair off and sits across from it. “Sit.”

She takes her cards back out and lays the handkerchief flat.

“If you think for a moment…” Draco starts, but she raises an eyebrow. He sits.

“You never told me what you need for your plan, so we’re going to figure it out,” Luna says. “You, me, and the cards.”

She offers up the deck and he extends his right hand to choose. Luna shakes her head. “The other hand.”

He raps on the deck as he had been taught in divination. Luna nods.

She cuts the deck in three and pulls one card from each pile.

He remembers, vaguely, how it worked. A three-card read. One for the past. One for the present. One for the future.

First, the past. She turns the card. The Moon.

“Deception. Yes, that is right. There was deception, yes.” She says.

She moves on to the other card. The Present.

The Hyerophant.

Then the next. Without pause.

The Hanged Man.

“I think the journey is quite clear.”

Draco laughs. “Please do explain.”

“There was darkness. You are now on the road of knowledge. Now there will be need for a sacrifice,” she says, as if it is all there.

“I have nothing to sacrifice,” Draco says.

Luna looks at him, confused. “Of course, you do. You have yourself.”

They sit in silence for a time.

“Pick one more,” she orders.

The coffeeshop has grown cold in the dark night, and Draco swears he can smell the coming rain. Still, he chooses. He taps the middle pile.

Luna turns the card. The Judgement.

“The cards say wake up, Draco. Wake up!”

She claps her hands in front of his face and then there is dark.

/ / / / / / / / / /

He awakes the next morning to the sound of his mobile buzzing, and he can’t remember how he closed the shop or how he got home. Crookshanks is looking at him like he is insane, and like his mobile has been buzzing for too long.

It’s Luna. Of course it is.

“How… How did I get home?”

“You apparated from Diagon Alley,” she says.

“Did you read my fortune last night?” he asks.

“I didn’t see you last night. I had a reading,” she says.

“So you didn’t do readings in my coffee shop yesterday?” Draco asks.

“No, but that sounds fun. I’ll do that tonight, if you wish,” she suggests. Draco presses a hand to his head.

“So yesterday we went to see Katie Bell.”

“Yes. I was just calling to remind you to do the clockwise stir today, for the potion.”

“Right.”

Draco sits up on the bed. He remembers his cards vaguely. Mostly he remembers thinking about sacrifice. “We need a sacrifice. Lamb to the slaughter.”

“Do we?” Luna asks. “I was thinking you need a way in. Or, more accurately, a way out.”

“Of Azkaban?” he asks.

“Yes, of course. And I know someone.” Her voice on the line pauses. “Hmm. Maybe it is a sacrifice.”

“What is?” he asks, knowing full well he will not get a straight answer.

“Give me the address to your coffee shop and I’ll be there later. With… well, with someone, maybe, if I can talk them into it.”

Draco sighs. He rattles off the address, and he imagines her writing it down in purple ink, with heart-dotted I’s.

“Draco?”

“Yes?”

“Did I read your cards last night? In your dream?”

“Yes,” he says, pained. Crookshanks takes residence on his lap and meows at him.

“Do you remember the cards?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“The Moon, The Hyerophant, The Hanged Man. And then, The Judgement.”

Silence. “I see what you mean,” she says, focused. “I’ll be by this afternoon.”

She hangs up without another word and Draco is left holding phone and cat and headache.

“Good lord,” he mutters, and gets up to do a clockwise stir on the bubbling potion.

/ / / / / / / / / /

He showers, deliberately trying to keep his mind from veering off into territories he doesn’t want to visit.

He’s held so many secrets over the years, it’s hard to keep up with what is true and what is not, what he’s supposed to hide and what he’s supposed to keep out in the open.

He scrubs his arms and lists things.

The Mark, he no longer hides it, although living among Muggles… it could be said it’s hidden in plain sight.

His scars, he hides most of the time, except the burn scars made by the coffee machine.

The fact that he, almost-entirely theoretically, likes men: he hides that. Not that he pretends to particularly like women. He just… pretends not to like anyone.

His complete lack of understanding of how credit cards actually work, he hides that masterfully.

What he shows is a shorter list.

He shows a sanitized version of himself, of a half-grumpy, half-kind coffee man.

What he doesn’t want to think of. That’s a longer list.

His father.

The sacrifice.

Harry Potter rotting away in prison for seven years, while most of his friends believed him innocent, or at least not that guilty. Harry Potter moving further away from sanity, every day, because he refused to put Neville at risk and decided to send him a message in Morse Code. Harry Potter, grabbing his cloak and asking Draco to save him.

Harry Potter, bloody stupid hero.

Draco presses his forehead against the shower wall.

They had saved each other, before. It had been a back and forth of trying to finish each other off and unwillingly being each other’s lifeboat.

Draco knows he has to avoid thinking of Potter imprisoned, because if he lets the thought in, it will be all his mind will want to ruminate, and it won’t be productive, and it won’t help get Potter out.

November is drawing to a close.

The last visitation before Christmas is on the 21st of December, the winter solstice, a high holiday if there ever was one.

And he has already sent an owl to apply for a visit.

He only needs a willing sacrifice.

/ / / / / / / / / /

He is halfway through a very complicated coffee order from an American tourist when Luna steps into the coffeeshop and waltzes over to her table – or the table he’d dreamed she’d colonized. He, of course, burns the almond milk and does not emulate the pumpkin spice precisely, and he contains himself instead of just sending the tourist off to the nearest Costa. This is why he did not buy a coffeeshop in a tourist-y area, but all of London’s city center seems a tourist-trap these days.

Luna unfolds her handkerchief and lays her cards and accepts the coffee and biscuit he sends her way with Paula, who raises an eyebrow at him but says nothing. Paula resists for about an hour before sitting across from Luna, getting her fortune told and the entire coffeeshop riled up.

Luna takes a break after a few hours, between readings. She stretches and walks over to the till to mess with Draco some.

“I have someone coming at closing,” Luna says.

Draco nods, pushing change into a young man’s hand. “Not telling, are we?”

Luna shrugs. “He might not come.”

“Your Gryffindor Recruitment attempts have yet to fail.”

She smiles. “Do any of your friends here know?”

He looks around. Maybe Paula is a friend. There are some regulars, yes, but no one he’s particularly friendly with. Just ships passing in the night. “No,” he answers, which is easier than explaining his complicated relationship to the world around him. “Statute of Secrecy and all that jazz.”

“I like jazz,” Luna points out. “I have a record player.”

“How often do you short it out?” Draco asks.

“I don’t go near it when it plays anymore.” Luna looks at Draco, her eyes fixed on his. “You’ve been thinking about him.”

Draco hands Luna half a biscotti, in an attempt to distract her. She takes it, but does not look away. “It really is unnerving, your gift,” he says, finally. “Trelawney would be so proud.” He does not add that yes, he has been thinking about Potter. That yes, he has been contemplating the sliver of life that Potter has endured these past seven years because he was too stubborn, too brave, too much Potter. And that the eyes haunt him, every night.

And yet she sees. She takes a bite of the biscotti and smiles. “You make it quite easy.”

“How so?” Draco asks. Intrigued, he leans his elbows on the counter, nearly dropping the charity collection tin beside the till.

“You named your coffee shop ‘The Seeker’,” she says, and with a soft giggle, goes back to her table (because it is, now, her table) to attend to the next person who looks for guidance for their future.

And Draco knows he has been found out.

And it is not altogether an unpleasant experience, sharing this secret.

Maybe he does have one more friend in this ridiculous coffeeshop that is his life.

Maybe that friend is Luna Lovegood.

/ / / / / / / / /

Paula has already left with the day-olds for the food bank, and Draco is cleaning all surfaces thoroughly, when Luna steps outside the doors for a minute and comes back with Dean Thomas in tow.

That would be Dean Thomas, Auror for Her Majesty’s Ministry for Magic.

Dean is as unassuming as always, and he looks at home in a Muggle café, a leather jacket and jeans. He can see an emblem on the jacket and presumes that it has been transfigured from his Auror robes to bring him to this moment, to this place.

“Coffee?” Draco offers, pointing to the table where Luna has decamped all afternoon.

“Make it Irish,” Dean says. “I’m off duty.”

Draco nods, unsure, and reaches to a low cabinet for a bottle of Firewhiskey he keeps hidden behind the cleaning supplies. He tips it into the coffee mug, then thinks better of it, and carries the mugs, the bottle and a couple of glasses to the table.

Luna smiles widely at Dean, and Draco can only imagine what Luna has explained.

Dean tips the bottle into his coffee, and lets it glug twice before handing it back to Draco, who does the same.

“Cheers,” Dean says. “To Harry Potter probably not being a murderer.”

Draco clinks his cup to Dean’s. “To Harry Potter being falsely imprisoned for seven years.”

“To freeing Harry Potter?” Luna offers, using a glass of straight Firewhiskey.

Dean looks at them both with a considered pause. “To career suicide,” he says, then takes a long drink from his cup.

Draco drinks deep as well.

/ / / / / / / / / / /

Draco is not entirely clear on how they end up sitting in the middle of a Muggle pub with a pint each and music blasting in their ears.

Luna does an absent Muffliato with a wave of her hand, and Draco is once again struck by how this odd woman is a powerful yet unassuming witch.

“Azkaban is a shit posting,” Dean says, halfway through his pint already. “I have to do something completely stupid to get it.”

“But not dangerous,” Luna points out, for possibly the third time tonight. Dean doesn’t seem to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of guy, but Luna doesn’t tire of pointing out that whatever he does, he cannot put himself or anyone else at risk.

“I’ll figure it out,” Dean whispers, and Draco can hardly hear it over the sound of pub-pop. Dean looks up from his pint and looks at Draco intensely. For a minute, Draco thinks he’s going to ask what everyone else has. The why has been important to everyone else Luna has dragged him along to meet. He thinks he understands Potter better from meeting this barrage of Gryffindors, but his own answers never seem to satisfy.

But Dean asks no questions. “It would be you,” he says, and drains his pint. Luna takes his glass and heads back to the bar to get a refill, leaving them alone.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Draco says, and he just sips at his Guinness, bitter and slowly warming as he ignores it.

Dean rests his arms on the table, his chin on his hands. “You two always had… well, this unhealthy fixation thing going on. He was always trying to find out what you were up to, you were always getting in his face.”

“We were idiots.”

“You were kids,” Dean counters. “But I see what you mean.”

Draco stares down at his pint, and he’s almost sure it’s filling itself back up. “You used to draw. And paint. I remember.”

Dean’s eyes soften and he looks up at Draco with a dash of confusion. “Yeah, I haven’t done that in a while.” He makes a show of pointing to the small pin on his lapel. “Auror Department. At her Majesty and the Ministry’s service.”

“I thought you’d be an artist,” Draco points out.

Luna finds her way back to the table and hands Dean a new pint, the foam swishing and sliding over the side of the glass. “Art… People aren’t really into art that’s fucked up.”

Luna opens her mouth to say something, but doesn’t. Her impression of a guppy is not lost on Draco.

“Fucked up,” Draco says, and it comes out as a statement of fact, even though his intention is to ask.

“After the war, all I could draw was dead people. And not, like, portraits of when they’d been happy. I just… well, pictures of corpses aren’t very popular. And it freaked out my parents, and my friends, so I just stopped. Being an Auror is a much better use of my time.”

Draco nods, as if he understands. He thinks he does, a bit.

Dean drains his pint again, and Draco wonders if he has work in the morning. He remembers Seamus quick fingers working over a locked door. Neville anxious and smelling of grass. Katie Bell combing over a stack of wands to find one for Harry. And Dean, drinking and never putting pen to paper. He had thought he was the only one touched by the war, and he was, in his own particular way. Now he can see how fucked up they all ended up. And Luna picks up the pieces and brings them together.

Dean sighs and leans his head on Luna’s shoulder. “Can I crash on your sofa?” he asks her.

“I have an early reading,” she says, and Draco can tell she is lying.

Dean nods. “I… I can’t face Ginny tonight. Not if we’re doing this. I just… I can’t.”

The words are out of Draco’s mouth before he can stop them. “I have a sofa. But you’ll have to share with Granger’s cat.”

Dean nods, and ambles over to the bar to get another pint.

/ / / / / / / / /

Draco Apparates Dean into his apartment, side-along, because Dean is having trouble staying upright. Luna has tucked a bit of parchment with Dean’s home information, in case it is needed, and has promised to call the next morning.

Dean sort of just drops onto Draco’s sofa, missing Crookshanks by about half a second.

“If Harry could see this,” Dean says. “Crashing on Draco Malfoy’s living room.”

“Do you think he’d be surprised?” Draco asks, giving the cauldron of Polyjuice its nightly stir.

Dean props himself up on his elbows. “Not really. Ginny, however…”

“What about Ginevra?” Draco asks. He’s been holding the question on the back of his tongue ever since Dean mentioned her at the pub, and now he lets it out, as nonchalant as possible.

“We’re married, you know that, right?” Dean asks. Draco is unable to control his eyebrows which fly up in surprise. “No, of course. Luna would not have thought that information was relevant. The way her mind works… We’ve been married for longer than Harry and Hermione… We have a kid, he’s four. Name’s Fred.”

Draco’s hands begin to shake somewhat, and he figures even pouring himself a glass of water now is out of the question. “Why are you doing this, then?” Draco asks, leaning forward on his kitchen worktop.

“When it happened and Ron and Ginny just… forgot about Harry and Hermione’s wedding… Ginny forgot about other things, too. Some days she wouldn’t remember being married to me… I know something dark happened. I know something isn’t right, but…” Dean looks at Draco with a weak smile. “She’s my wife. I can’t tell her I’m doing this. She believes Harry is guilty… she is so certain. And she remembers me now, she never forgets Fred but… you know…”

Draco doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have the right words, has never even had a serious relationship. What can he tell this man?

Dean leans back down and stares up at the ceiling. “We’ve all been afraid for too long. Whatever changed Ron and Ginny’s memories, it broke us all. At least she didn’t forget me entirely, not like Ron forgot about Luna.”

Draco leans in. “What?”

“Oh, fuck. She didn’t tell you that either,” Dean mumbles. “Ron and Luna were engaged. Sort of. Luna called it something else, promised, but Ron called it engaged. They were happy. And then everything happened and Ron just forgot. I mean, he remembers her as a very annoying school friend. But nothing else.”

Draco takes a deep breath and steadies his voice. “You are an Auror. How could you not… Why couldn’t any of you do anything?”

“War makes you hang on to what you have, because you’ve lost so much,” Dean sighs out. “If I kept trying to make Ginny see reason, I would have lost her. I can’t…”

He turns his head to face Draco.

“We’re all going to help you get Harry out, but you should understand this: he will never be innocent, ever again. He will always be a wanted man, as long as he’s alive. And once he’s dead, his name will disappear from history. And we’re all powerless to stop it.” Dean drops his head back on the couch. “Maybe I should have kept on drawing corpses.”

Draco stands and walks to the cupboard beside the telly. He tosses Dean a quilt and says nothing else.

“Maybe that’s why we needed you,” Dean muses, his voice muffled by the quilt. “You have nothing left to lose.”

/ / / / / / / /

Dean is gone by the time Draco wakes up. There is a note on his table, just a thanks and his signature.

Luna’s call comes in while he’s fixing himself a cup of tea.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Silence.

“He told you, didn’t he?” Luna asks.

Draco says nothing.

“It’s just as well, I should have told you.”

More silence.

“I never told you where Harry worked,” Luna adds, switching subjects without so much as turning on a blinker light for warning.

“No. I forgot I’d asked.” Draco feels this entire endeavor is slipping away from him, and his memory seems to be going right along with it.

"Hmm,” Luna says. Her voice is shaky on the other side of the call, and Draco feels uncomfortable for it. “Do you think you can get away from the Coffee Shop early?” she asks, finally.

/ / / / / / / / / / /

Luna meets him outside The Seeker, her coat a dizzying array of patchwork in every color and texture imaginable.

Draco starts towards the closest alcove for apparition, but Luna shakes her head. “We’re not far. We can walk.”

Draco wraps his coat tightly around himself and follows Luna, catching up with her. “I don’t think Dean meant to… you know…”

“It’s ok,” Luna shrugs. “I should have told you before.”

“Did you try…” Draco starts, but Luna’s side-glance silences him.

“Anything you’re thinking of, I tried.” She stops walking and turns to Draco, her hands gripping both his arms. “This isn’t about making everything right. Just… Just making things a little better. Clean up a bit of the mess. To right just this one wrong.”

Draco nods, feeling her fingers digging in. “Alright.”

“You can’t fix everything,” she adds. “That’s something that you have to learn. Harry sure didn’t.”

She sighs and turns Draco to face a shop window beside them. It’s closed and dusty and empty. She points up to the sign. “Potter Boulangerie & Patisserie”.

“What the fuck, Luna?” he asked.

“That’s what he did. He made bread, and once in a blue moon he’d sit on the Wizengamot, when it was asked of him, when it was important.” She gives Draco a sideways glance. “So it really does make you wonder why, doesn’t it? Because he was just trying to live his life.”

Draco rubs his face raw with the palms of his hands. “What if he did do it? What if this is just a fucking wild ghoul chase?”

“Harry Potter, evil baker,” Luna says, a smile fleeting across her lips. “Highly unlikely.”

Draco presses his hands onto the glass of the shop front and peers inside. “I think the world needs more Ravenclaws and fewer Gryffindors, is what I think.”

“Balance, Draco Malfoy,” Luna says, threading her arm through Draco’s, as if they’ve been friends for a lifetime, instead of uncertain allies for a little under a month. “Where would light be without darkness?”

Draco allows himself to be dragged along by Luna. “The Master and Margarita,” Draco says.

“You know, the Polyjuice will be ready in about a week,” Luna points out, taking the idea out of thin air. “I have an idea for testing it.”

And Draco just knows he’s not going to like it.


	6. The Test Run

Getting a text from Luna is nothing out of the ordinary now. Random things pop into her head and spill onto Draco’s mobile. 

Things like, “Do Royal and Crookshanks share mice?”

Or, “Incense.” And nothing else, like their chat is a shopping list.

And then sometimes, “Gemini: Sit with your emotions at the end of the month instead of trying to avoid them. You will find teamwork especially rewarding. Do not make hasty decisions. Your lucky number is 25.”

But today, the message is far more cryptic. “Get the Prophet today.”

Draco sighs and drops his head back on the bed. It is already the end of November, and he’s quite done with sitting with his emotions, thank you very much. 

He gently pushes Crookshanks off his belly and heads to bathroom to shower and face the new day.

The closest magical news stand isn’t within walking distance, but there’s a small restaurant nearby that serves a full English and over-sweetened tea for cheap, and has a few issues of the Daily Prophet lying around, charmed so only wizards and witches can see them. 

Hybrid shops have been popping up over London in the past few years, with small magical protections to keep with the Statute of Secrecy. He’s not entirely sure how it works and he’s thought about it for his coffee shop, but has decided it best to just let things be. He doesn’t want someone to walk in off the street and see the Dark Mark on his arm and make a fuss. 

He rolls down his sleeves as he walks in and orders, just in case, and he picks up the paper. 

There, on the front page, it says, “Thomas, star Auror, demoted for insubordination.”

And there’s a lovely moving-picture of Dean Thomas decking Auror Robards right on the chin. “Fuckin’ Gryffindor,” Draco mutters, taking a sip of his horrid tea.

Luna slips into a chair beside him without so much as a hello. She’s wearing a black beanie and black turtleneck and Draco knows - he just knows - that this is her idea of covert. 

“I saw you through the window,” she says and smiles and orders what Draco is having. 

Draco has begun to wonder if Luna has placed some sort of tracking device on him. He decides not to dwell on it. 

“So, what’s the plan, oh, great mastermind?” Draco jests. 

Luna smiles at what she perceives as a compliment. She slides a small envelope towards Draco. It contains a few short, very-red hairs. 

“What the…”

“George Weasley,” she says, sagely. She also hands him a small keychain in the shape of the Empire State building. “A Portkey to The Burrow.”

“Are you mental?” Draco asks. He takes out a few banknotes from his pocket and leaves them at the table and stands. “We shouldn’t even be talking about this here.”

He walks out with Luna close behind him. “I wasn’t done with my tea.”

“Luna, you are absolutely and unequivocally insane if you think for one moment that I am going into that weasel den. They will find me out and skewer me. I do not want to become the main ingredient for some crazy new type of firework,” Draco says, and he can feel himself losing control as he walks faster and faster. Luna keeps up the pace, in spite of her many-colored, many-layered skirts. 

“Dean will be there,” she says, even though it is not a good selling point. 

Draco turns to face her. “Luna, I never exchanged more than two words with George Weasley. I know nothing of his life, I would not recognize his wife on the street, I don’t even know if he’s married. You want me to go into his family home, wearing his face, and you expect me to get out alive, just to test the Polyjuice potion?” 

“Not just for that,” she says, softly. It’s an admission, and she bites her lip and looks at Draco with innocent eyes. “We kind of need something that’s there, for the rescue.”

Draco presses one hand against his forehead. “Fine. I’ll bite. What do we need?”

“Harry’s Invisibility Cloak,” she says, matter-of-factly.

Draco pauses for a minute. “Fuck.”

“What?” Luna asks, crossing her arms.

Draco sighs. “That actually makes sense. We do need it. But can’t Dean get it for us?”

Luna shakes her head. “He can’t meet us anymore. He’s under observation because of what he did, and if the plan works out, they’ll trace back every contact the guards have.”

“Fucking hippogriff tits,” Draco mutters. “Alright. Let’s go to the coffee shop, and then you tell me everything I need to know about George Weasley and his lovely family.” 

/ / / / / / / / / / / 

The first hurdle is going to be to keep the actual George Weasley away from The Burrow. 

“I have a thought on that,” Luna says, but does not elaborate. 

“You can be very exasperating,” Draco points out, but Luna chooses to take that as a compliment also.

Draco spends the day being quizzed by Luna on all things Weasley, from food and drink preferences, to oddly-placed birthmarks. It’s disturbing and he feels like he’s cramming for his OWLs. The coffee shop is quiet, and Paula lets him off the hook for just hanging around and not getting much done. 

“I have some of Ron’s old clothes, they won’t remember them and they should fit the George body. You in the George body,” she says. Draco wants to do her a kindness at this revelation, maybe squeeze her hand. She is braver than he thought, and he thought her to be very brave already. But he doesn’t do anything, because he does not know if any such expression would be welcome. They are not proper friends, he thinks. She is helping him because she wants him to save Potter. “It’s alright,” she adds, and for a second Draco thinks he might have spoken out loud. 

“What is?” he asks.

“You don’t have to feel sorry for me. I’m used to it,” she explains. 

Draco has been given an in, then, and he bites. “Can someone get used to something like that? The person you love forgetting you?”

She shrugs kindly. “A person will get used to just about anything,” she says. “After the war, we all learned to live with ghosts. Then we had to learn to live without them. But we did learn.”

Draco nods. “Yes. We did.”

“It’s really no different. I just imagine that the Ron I loved died peacefully, in his sleep, after being in love with me for a very long time. I let him rest in peace. The one that goes on, he is someone else.”  
She threads her fingers together, one hand with the other. “Hermione taught me about time. That which has yet to happen need not happen, that which has happened is bound to always happen. He loved me once, and that love is forever. He doesn’t love me now, and that is also true.”

“I’m not sure I understand that,” Draco says. He downs a bitter espresso in one gulp, and decides he doesn’t understand that nor does he want to.

Luna’s eyes quiver wisely. “You will.”

They stay silent for a long time. Finally, Luna breaks the silence. “I think we have planned for every contingency, except what happens if this all works.”

“If it works, he will be free,” Draco says, softly.

“Yes, but what does that mean? What do you do then? What does he do?” Luna rattles off. She takes a deep sip from her tea and closes her eyes for a second. “I wish I knew more, but the universe is being very quiet.”

Draco nods softly. For once, he wishes the universe was very loud, loud enough so that Luna can hear it; loud enough to drown out all the worries that Draco now holds, like so many crumbling autumn leaves.

He looks outside. It looks like it might snow.

/ / / / / / / / / / 

Draco follows all the steps to the letter, and is rewarded with a steaming, bubbling, putrid, bright-orange potion overflowing from his mug. Luna eyes the concoction with a wrinkled nose and great curiosity.

“Shouldn’t you be making sure our source doesn’t make a sudden appearance?” Draco asks. “If there is someone who should not be made to face a doppleganger, it is George Weasley. There is enough cruelty in the world.”

“You are very dramatic.” Luna shakes her head. “Don’t worry, I have an operative on it.” She gives Draco the weirdest wink he has ever seen, her mouth curving oddly. He shudders to think who the operative might be. Maybe Finnigan. Probably Finnigan.

“I worry. It’s what I do.” He sighs, bottles up half the potion in a hip-flask, then looks at the mug with apprehension.

“Go on already,” Luna insists.

He takes a deep breath, plugs his nose, and drinks.

The first thing he feels is his spine re-arranging. 

And then he drops to his knees.

He focuses on his hands, how they seem to grow, then shrink, then grow again, his skin tinged pink and full of freckles. Even the tiny hairs on the back of his hand are now red. 

He runs to the bathroom and sees George Weasley staring back at him, wearing Draco’s ill-fitting clothes. 

“I look just like him,” Draco says, looking curiously at himself in the mirror. His new self. “Sound like him too.”

Luna peers over his shoulder at his reflection. “It worked, then.”

“You can tell, right?” Draco asks.

Luna shrugs. “I know it’s you under there, so that’s what I know.”

Draco doesn’t question it. “Give me the clothes.”

Luna hands him a colorful jumper, a t-shirt, some jeans. “I wouldn’t recommend changing your underwear. That would be a strange experience.”

Draco nods, choosing to heed her warning. There are some things he does not need to know about any Weasley. 

He hurries. He has five minutes to the portkey, and about two top-offs of Polyjuice in the flask, so he needs to be back home in under three hours or risk being caught. He changes quickly, gives Luna one hopefully-reassuring glance, and takes hold of the keychain.

And he disappears.

/ / / / / / / / / / / 

The Portkey drops him outside the white picket fence that surrounds the teetering structure that has to be The Burrow. There is soft music coming from inside the house, Celestina Warbeck, Draco notes. There is the scent of homemade bread and roast and there are sparklers from running children in the backyard.

Draco watches his larger feet and longer legs carry him through the small gate, into the backyard.

A small child runs towards him and Draco can’t help himself, lifting the child above his head. “Hiya, Fred!” he says, doing his best George Weasley impression. Who this child is, it’s not a mystery: He is the perfect combination of Dean and Ginevra, and sure enough he is followed by Dean, who greets Draco with a handshake.

Dean knows, Luna has told him as much, but it’s easier to just pretend. “I saw the paper this morning. Rough.”

“Frankly, I’ve wanted to knock his lights out for years,” Dean states, shrugging. “Want to give me my kid back?”

“Nah, I’ll keep him, teach him some real magic,” Draco counters. Dean quirks his eyebrow but Fred, tiny Fred, with his curly hair and his fierce freckles, just smiles widely and pumps his fists in the air. 

“Teach me tricks, Uncle George!” 

Dean laughs and raises his arms to get his child back. “Maybe later, kid. Right now, your Uncle George needs to get something from Ron’s room. I’m sure it’s in the trunk somewhere. And he should probably do it fast, because Ron could arrive any minute now.”

Draco nods, grateful. 

“And where would I find Ron’s room?” Draco asks.

“Third floor, second door on the right,” Dean whispers, raising the child onto his shoulders and carrying him back. 

Draco hopes against all hope that none of the Weasley’s have Luna’s clarity of vision, and that no one will be able to see through the Polyjuice. 

He walks into the house, avoiding looking at Ginevra, wanting to avoid as many Weasleys as humanly possible. His master plan of skulking is thwarted by Molly Weasley, who embraces him in the tightest hug he has ever experienced. 

“George! I didn’t know you were coming tonight!” Molly says, pinching cheeks and swatting his arse in a very motherly way, but very uncomfortable to Draco. “Have you been eating?”

“Yes, Mum,” he replies, and he knows it’s the right answer. “I’m always eating.”

“Then you won’t mind a bit more,” she says. He wants to make his way upstairs but he knows he can’t escape her now. So maybe he’ll just… use the opportunity.

He steps into the kitchen after her, and he’s quickly treated to a heaped plate of roast and Yorkshire pudding. He hasn’t eaten like this in… well… not since Hogwarts, really, and the smell is wonderful. He digs in with his fork and stops, remembering that George is left-handed. He quickly switches hands and tucks in. 

“Sorry I’m eating so fast, I just have to make it back to the shop tonight. Some inventory stuff,” he makes up. “This is really good, Mum.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Molly says, blushing. “Did you see your dad?”

“I’ll see him on my way out.”

Molly purses her lips. “He’s in his workshop again, fiddling with the mobiles. Keeps trying to charge them with magic and blowing them up. I’m close to just letting him bring in a power line.”

Draco nods, between bites. He sees an in, then. “Hermione would have loved to see that.”

Molly gives him a kind smile. “Yes, she would have.” She quirks an eyebrow. “Funny, I was just thinking about her today. What with Ron’s birthday and all.”

Fucking Luna Lovegood. He swallows hard. “Yes. Dear Ronniekins hitting the big three-five.”

“Yes… She would have loved to be here, wouldn’t she.” Molly wipes her hands on her apron. “Well, they both would have, but that was another time.”

And just like that, Harry Potter is glossed over, erased, forgotten, buried.

“Is Ronniekins bringing a girl?”

Molly swats at Draco – at Draco’s version of George – with a tea towel. 

“You’re one to talk. Are you seeing anyone?” she asks curiously.

“Muuuum!” he protests, and he’s sure that George Weasley would do the same.

“You’re not getting any younger, and then your knees will give you trouble when you run after your little ones.” She sighs. “Will you stay for cake?” 

He looks up at the clock to look at the time and use it as an excuse, but finds himself staring at the strangest clock he has ever seen, and really hoping that Molly will not look up. Because it has a hand for George Weasley, and it is definitely not pointed at Home. 

It is pointed at a place between “Work” and “Home”, but it is decidedly not Home. 

He pushes his plate away. “You know, I want to leave a surprise for Ron. Up in his room. Just in case I don’t manage to stay long enough.”

She pats his back, softly. “You are so busy these days. Sometimes I wonder, if Fred were here…”

Draco stands and kisses Molly softly, George’s lips touching her hair. “He would say that we spend much too much time talking about him and too little time having fun.”

Molly laughs softly. “Oh, he would, wouldn’t he?” She smiles at him and pinches his cheek again. “Go on, be quick then, Ron will be here any minute. Just don’t hide anything explosive or anything that rots easily. You know it might take him weeks to find it.”

“Sure thing, Mum,” he says, leaving her behind as he makes his way out into the hall and up the steps. 

A flurry of blonde hair runs past him on the stairs. “Hi, George,” Fleur Delacour says, running after two small girls. “Girls, come back here,” she calls, in her heavily-accented voice. 

Draco picks up his pace. He walks into the room that Dean indicated and closes the door behind him. For good measure, he tops up his Polyjuice taking a quick swig of his flask. He stares at himself in Ron Weasley’s mirror. He looks at himself, twinned in his reflection, and spares a moment for the universe and for Fred Weasley. He does believe that he is partly responsible for every death the war has wrought, for every inch of pain that was suffered. He carries Fred, as he carries Seamus and Dean and Katie. He carries Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks. He carries Lavender Brown. 

He carries them all, and it’s a gaping hole in his chest. 

He shakes his head and focuses. He needs to get the cloak and get out. He needs to get the hell away from this place, with its loving hugs and perfect roast and false loving memories of people long-gone. 

He needs to get the hell out.

He heads for the trunk first, but there’s nothing. He knows he won’t see the damn thing, but he feels around for the smooth fabric. Nothing. 

He rummages in the cupboards and drawers, but there’s nothing.

Finally, he knows what he needs to do. He draws his wand and softly says, “Accio Cloak.”

Nothing. Then he takes a moment. He thinks. 

“Accio Harry Potter,” he says. 

A floorboard begins to shake and tremble, something knocking at it from beneath.

He kneels beside the loose floorboard and sees that it has been boarded down, tiny strips of wood and nails are placed crosswise keeping the floorboard in place.

He looks around and finds a small pocketknife in the bedside drawer, and uses it to pry the bits of wood and the nails, until he is faced with the loose floorboard and the trembling something below.

He pulls it up with a bit of force, casting a silencing charm first. 

A shoebox jumps up into Draco’s hands. 

Draco sits on the floor and opens the box.

He lets out a shaky breath as his fingers run over the pictures of three friends. Some of the photographs are Muggle, still and unmoving, but the smiles are wide. Then there’s the magical photographs: three friends hugging, three friends dancing. 

There are some news cut-outs. The three getting the Order of Merlin. 

And then, the picture that makes Draco lose his breath. 

It’s the three, in front of the Godric’s Hollow house. It was taken the day of the painting party, he recognizes the clothes, the stains on Hermione’s overalls. 

They are so happy and as they always were, a trio, Hermione, Harry, Ron. And they were, indeed, golden. Everything was happening for them. Everything was working. 

At the bottom of the box, beneath trinkets and knick-knacks that Draco has no illusions of understanding, he finds the cloak, the satiny fabric catching beneath his fingers. He pulls it out and tucks it inside his coat. He stuffs the box back under the floorboard and mutters a quick Reparo. The nails and wood start knitting themselves back together. 

He knows the cloak is the right idea, the best idea, but he wants to get something else, some bit of information, some other sign that he is right, that there is something wrong in all that has happened. He steps out of the room and makes his way down the stairs.

He glides, almost invisibly, between the Weasley’s and their extended families, shaking Bill’s hand, giving Fleur a quick hug, ruffling the little blonde girl’s hair. He manages to avoid a new encounter with Dean, and somehow makes it into Arthur Weasley’s workshop.

He finds the older man somewhere in the midst of piles and piles of shorted out mobiles, the smell of melted plastic and burned electronics wafting up from his desk. “Dad?” he calls out, and his chest feels empty and his heart hurts. He has never called anyone dad. Lucius was his Father, and that was questionable as well.

“George!” Arthur says, smiling widely at his arrival. “I guess your Mum told you about this.”

“No luck?” George asks.

“I have the best of luck in most endeavors, but making Muggle mobiles work on magic is not in the cards,” Arthur laments. Draco smiles back, taking advantage of this body’s ease with the expression. 

“I’m on my way back to the shop, have some things to do tonight, but I was… I’ve been thinking.”

Arthur clears a few of the mobiles away to get a better look at his son. Or the impostor that is dressed in his son’s skin. 

“About Fred?” Arthur asks.

“About Harry,” Draco counters. 

“Ah.”

There is a heavy silence, and the sound of a phone crackling, fizzling, exploding softly, followed by a puff of smoke. “Damn,” Arthur says. Draco contains a laugh.

“I’ve been thinking… what if it didn’t happen like the news says? What if Harry’s not guilty?” Draco asks, and he really wants an answer, a real answer, from someone… from a grown up, funnily enough. Draco wants someone to tell him the truth, to set him on a path, he wants someone to take this responsibility away from him, because it is too heavy.

“We always seem to have this talk around this time of year, don’t we?” Arthur says, inhaling the crisp winter air. “Something about Christmas always reminds us of Harry.”

“Tell me again,” Draco says, softly. 

Arthur leans back into his chair. “Harry was… maybe he still is… a powerful wizard. There were many variables that led to the fall of… You-Know-Who. But his power is undeniable. And there was a darkness in him, and I think we all discounted it as it being what Voldemort left behind. But maybe it wasn’t, George. Maybe it was there, just waiting. We ignored the signs, and for that, maybe we have a responsibility in all this.”

Draco doesn’t say anything. He thinks back to his interactions with Harry Potter. He doesn’t believe this darkness was inside Potter, not before Azkaban. He thinks that maybe now it is. 

He shudders to think what the darkness of Azkaban has done to the man he knew, and the man he’s gotten to know through Luna and Neville and Seamus and Dean. What it may have taken already.

“Do you really believe that?” Draco asks, and he thinks George would ask that, too. 

Because his brother had died defending the cause, and Harry Potter was the cause, in more ways than one. 

“I have to, George,” Arthur says, his eyes darkening. “Because what is the alternative?”

And Draco understands. The alternative is Harry Potter is a normal, human murderer, no magical darkness to him. The other alternative is that Harry Potter is innocent, locked up for seven years in a prison that has sucked his soul and damaged his body. 

The alternative is that they have buried a man alive, and no one wants to think of that too deeply.

“I should go,” Draco says, trying to keep his voice steady. He feels there is something in his own voice starting to filter through, but it’s probably nothing. “Please don’t tell Ron.”

Arthur gives Draco-as-Fred a quick smile. “You are a good man, George, and I am proud that you are still asking the hard questions. I just wish I had better answers.”

Draco gives Arthur a slow nod, and steps out of the house and into the night. 

He ducks behind the shed and wraps himself in the invisibility cloak. It smells of dust and humidity, but he ignores it, ignores everything as he hears Ron’s voice arriving to a chorus of happy birthdays. Draco runs, runs, runs out into the fields, then the woods, until he can’t breathe anymore. He shakes out of the cloak and takes the portkey in hand. 

He feels the pull at the center of his chest and then he is suddenly back in his apartment. In the mirror, he can see himself turning back into himself. He lets go of the face and life of George Weasley, under the watchful eyes of Luna, who has been apparently watching the telly in his favorite chair all this time. He places the cloak on top of his table and Crookshanks immediately finds it and curls up on it. 

“Don’t you have a flat?” Draco asks, taking off the Weasley coat and handing it to Luna.

“Yes, but I don’t have a telly and I’m really enjoying East Enders,” Luna says, stressing the really. “Do you want me to tell you what’s happened? Catch you up?”

Draco can’t help smiling. “I’ll put on the kettle first, if that’s alright.”

“Oh, yes. I popped down to the shop and got you biscuits. Ginger nuts.”

Draco nods. “Thanks, Luna.” He looks up from the kettle as he fills it, and maybe it’s something of George Weasley rubbing off on him, but he just straight-up asks. “Are we friends now?” he asks.

“Of course, we are,” Luna says, settling back into his chair. “Why do you ask?”

“My family did horrible things to you, kept you locked up, and I didn’t do anything.” Draco plugs the kettle in and waits for it to start boiling. He is waiting in silence for a long time.

Luna is pulling at a bit of string at the edge of her skirts, and she’s drawn up her knees to her chest. She turns to look at Draco, her eyes as wide as when they were children. “I used to think that I would be angry at you. But when you finally showed up, I saw that you needed a guide. We all need… direction. A path. I am your guide. You are my friend. It’s easier that way.”

The water boils, steam filling Draco’s small surroundings. He turns it off and pours the water into the mugs, letting the tea stain the water slowly. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand you,” Draco says. “But I’m glad that we are friends.”

Luna smiles at this. “Can you warm my biscuit on the cup?” she asks, and Draco can only nod. 

“Did you eat today?” he asks, and he’s aware he sounds like a mother. Not his mother. Maybe like Molly Weasley.

“Yes, I did. I had some lovely curry down the street.”

Draco thinks for a moment. “Did I give you keys?”

Luna shakes her head with a grin. “Draco, have you ever heard of magic?” she asks, and Draco cannot help but laugh. 

/ / / / / / / / 

The following Monday, Luna drops into the coffee shop and takes out her tarot cards covered in a silk scarf and sets herself up to a now-growing group of Tuesday regulars. Draco hasn’t seen her datebook, but if she has one, he is sure she has penciled in Tuesday Readings at The Seeker. 

The mood at the coffeeshop is lively. Luna seems to bring out smiles and the fortunes she tells are never bogged down by reality. She will tell people that they should call their family. She will tell an older woman that her daughter will visit soon. She gives them hope. She also makes them order coffee. And for some reason, the orders grow increasingly complex as the day wears on. He’s had to re-stock flavor syrups that people hadn’t ordered in years. He’s going through three times as much double cream. 

Paula has had to look up coffee recipes in her mobile. 

Paula seems to enjoy it the most, the Luna Days as she calls them. 

It’s almost closing time when Draco hears it. 

The owl flies right into the window, crashing with a thud. Paula doesn’t see it, but manages to hear it.

Draco spots it, and so does Luna.

He’s never gotten owl post at the coffee shop. 

Draco all but pushes Paula out of the coffee shop, offering to close. He gives the owl a very auspicious stare, daring it, just daring it to try something. The owl ruffles his feathers. Draco gives Luna a tilt of his head and she wraps up the last reading of the day, wrapping her cards in the silk scarf again and stuffing them into her purse.

But they are not fast enough. A second owl barrels into the window, then another. 

“One of them is going to kill itself,” Draco mutters. 

Luna opens the door. “They won’t stop until you get the message.”

Finally, a small barn owl makes its way through the door, and the other four owls seem to get the message, dropping their envelopes and scrolls and bits of parchment and flying back out. 

Luna grabs some biscotti from the jar beside the till and treats the barn owl. She is unimpressed: she pecks at it and spits it out. She flies to perch herself on the back of a chair, pretending it is the thin branch of some regal tree. 

“I think it’s safe to close the door now,” Luna says, but Draco says nothing.

Draco unfurls the scroll and reads the same message, over and over, until he is certain. He turns to tell Luna, but she has already picked up one of the other messages. She looks into Draco’s eyes, and she is mirroring the sadness he dares not show. “Your father is dying,” she says, softly. She tries to place a hand on Draco’s shoulder but he backs away.

“We have to change the timeline,” he says, all business. He will not dwell on it. He cannot dwell on it. He’s known this is coming for a very long time. 

“To when?” Luna asks. December just started; they are not ready.

Draco looks at the letter again. He finds a biro beside the till and scrawls a quick message. He ties the parchment around the barn owl’s leg and pats her head. The owl shakes off his hand, but understands. She flies off with determination.

Draco turns to Luna. “Tomorrow. We do it tomorrow.”

/ / / / / / / / / / / 

Luna paces Draco’s living room nervously. “Are you ready?” she asks. 

Draco has never seen Luna nervous, not really. It’s unnerving. He wants to make her a cup of tea and send her home, but he doesn’t. 

He may be putting everything on the line. But this is her show as much as it is his. 

Of course he isn’t ready. “Yes,” he lies. “You’re sure Dean will be there?”

Luna nods. “He started yesterday. It will be more complicated, he won’t have the… how did you call it? The lay of the land.”

Draco checks the elements he has laid out on the kitchen counter. 

There is the invisibility cloak. Two large vials of Polyjuice. The red wand that Katie Bell gave him. Harry’s glasses. On the cauldron on the hob, a different potion is brewing. He’ll have to stay up all night to brew the antidote he’ll also need. Luna sniffs at the cauldron knowingly, then looks over the other items. 

Luna touches the glasses, but says nothing. She knows he nicked them, but she really has no moral high ground, seeing as she has filched the last of his ginger biscuits.

Draco has also laid out clothes. Harry is probably skinnier than he is, and a bit shorter, but his jeans and jumper and coat should fit him just fine. Draco had wanted to go by Godric’s Hollow one more time before the mission, but now that they had to change everything up, this would have to do. 

“What about after?” Luna asks.

Draco pulls his hands into fists. “After I’ll have to hold a funeral for my father. I can do closed casket, but I have to bury something.” He shrugs. “I should probably go to the Manor first.”

“Should I meet you there?” Luna asks.

“I don’t know,” Draco says, and it’s true. He doesn’t know what’s right. He had things planned out in his mind, but it doesn’t seem like they’ll work out too well, and taking Harry Potter to the fucking Malfoy Manor in its present state seems insulting. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s best if we’re not seen together.”

Luna folds her hands onto her lap and looks at them for a long time. “Will you be alright?” she asks.

Draco looks at Luna, who is pointedly not looking back at him. “What do you mean?”

She does look up now, and Draco wishes she hadn’t. “You know what I mean.”

And maybe he does. Draco is not ready, in more ways than one. Because his work on this, this obsession, it has led him down a path of recognition and knowledge he never should’ve had. He knows now, he knows a Harry Potter who lived a full life and had it ripped from him. He knows a man that was and has now disappeared, and he doesn’t know who he’ll find on the other side of the bars tomorrow. And if he were to close his eyes, he would still feel the bruised knuckles that brushed against his neck when Harry Potter grabbed his cloak a little over a month ago. 

Draco grips the counter, his knuckles turning white. “I don’t know, either,” he says. 

“Well,” Luna sighs. “You’ll figure it out tomorrow, then.”

She practically knocks him over with a hug so strong he feels his ribs strain against her arms. “Don’t get killed,” she adds. 

Draco nods, uncertain. He thinks, death may not be the worse outcome.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for this particular pairing, but this is a story I've had in my head for a few years. This is an extremely slow burn, hopefully you'll bear with it. Additional Tags will be added as the story moves forward and there will be explicit content further down the road. I hope you enjoy it and please drop a comment with your thoughts.


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